Question - Grammar

Grammar

Languages may use both syntax and prosody to distinguish interrogative sentences (which pose questions) from declarative sentences (which state propositions). Syntax refers to grammatical changes, such as moving words around or adding questions words; prosody refers to changes in tone of voice while speaking. Some syntactic devices used by languages for marking questions include:

• A marked word order different from the usual word order in statements (see wh-movement). For example, French speakers may ask questions using inversion, and English speakers may do so in sentences with auxiliary verbs (as in "Do you want...?" as opposed to "You do want....").
• An interrogative mood or some other verb inflection such as the subjunctive mood
• A grammatical particle (cf. Japanese か ka, Mandarin 吗 ma)
• Replacing a word in a declarative sentence with an interrogative word (also known as a wh-word) such as "what". For example, in English the declarative "you want something" can be changed into a question by replacing 'something' with 'what' and moving it, as well as adding the auxiliary "do" ("What do you want?"); in Mandarin, however, only the first step is necessary (你要什么？ nǐ yào shénme, lit. "you want what?")

Non-syntactic devices include:

• A different intonation pattern (often a raised pitch near the end of the sentence) - see Intonation (linguistics)
• (In written language) distinctive punctuation, such as the question mark

Combinations of any of the above are possible, as well as alternative patterns for different types of questions. For example, English employs the syntactic approach (word order change) and the tonal pattern for common questions, but resorts to just raising the tone while leaving the word order as it is for focused (emphatic) questions such as "You did what?". Spanish changes the word order only when interrogative pronouns are involved (not in yes-no questions). In Chinese, the word order remains the same for questions as for statements, with the particle added to create a wh-interrogative in situ.

In languages written in Latin or Cyrillic, a question mark at the end of the sentence identifies questions orthographically. In Spanish, an additional mark is placed at the beginning (e.g. ¿Cómo está usted?).

"Negative questions" are interrogative sentences which contain negation in their phrasing, such as "Shouldn't you be working?". These can have different ways of expressing affirmation and denial from the standard form of question, and they can be confusing, since it is sometimes unclear whether the answer should be the opposite of the answer to the non-negated question. For example, if one does not have a passport, both "Do you have a passport?" and "Don't you have a passport?" are properly answered with "No", despite apparently asking opposite questions. The Japanese language avoids this ambiguity. Answering "No" to the second of these in Japanese would mean, "I do have a passport".

A similar ambiguous question in English is "Do you mind if...?" The responder may not reply unambiguously "Yes, I do mind," if they do, or "No, I don't mind," if they don't, a simple "No" or "Yes" answer can lead to confusion, as a single "No" can seem like a "Yes, I do mind," as in "No, please don't do that," and a "Yes" can seem like a "No, I don't mind," as in "Yes, go ahead." An easy way to bypass this confusion would be to ask a non-negative question, such as "Is it all right with you if...?"

Some languages have different particles (for example the French "si", the German "doch" or the Danish "jo") to answer negative questions (or negative statements) in an affirmative way; they provide a means to express contradiction.

There are three types of sentences in the English language where the predicate can come before the subject. An interrogative sentence is one such one; for example, in "what did you buy?", the predicate "what" comes before the subject "you".