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:
“I don’t think the question needs to be genderized. It would feel great to anyone. But whether you’re a girl or a boy or a Martian, you still have to go out and prove yourself again every day.”
—Julie Krone (b. 1963)
“It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“The question of whether it’s God’s green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)