A question may be either a linguistic expression used to make a request for information, or else the request itself made by such an expression. This information may be provided with an answer.
Questions are normally put forward or asked using interrogative sentences. However they can also be formed by imperative sentences, which normally express commands: "Tell me what two plus two is"; conversely, some expressions, such as "Would you pass the salt?", have the grammatical form of questions but actually function as requests for action, not for answers, making them allofunctional. (A phrase such as this could, theoretically, also be viewed not merely as a request but as an observation of the other person's desire to comply with the request given.)
Read more about Question: Varieties of Questions, Grammar, Questions and Answers, Learning, Philosophical Questions, Origins of Questioning Behavior
Famous quotes containing the word question:
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Life is a thin narrowness of taken-for-granted, a plank over a canyon in a fog. There is something under our feet, the taken-for-granted. A table is a table, food is food, we are we—because we don’t question these things. And science is the enemy because it is the questioner. Faith saves our souls alive by giving us a universe of the taken-for-granted.”
—Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968)
“To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. We can only obey our own polarity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)