A
question may be either a linguistic expression used to make a request for
informationInformation in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
, or else the request itself made by such an expression. This information may be provided with an
answerGenerally, an answer is a reply to a question or is a solution, a retaliation, or a response that is relevant to the said question.In law, an answer was originally a solemn assertion in opposition to some one or something, and thus generally any counter-statement or defense, a reply to a question...
.
Questions are normally
put forward or
asked using interrogative
sentencesIn the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
. However they can also be formed by
imperativeThe imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
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.)
Varieties of questions
Questions have a number of uses. 'Raising a question' may guide the questioner along an avenue of
researchResearch can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...
(
see Socratic methodThe Socratic method , named after the classical Greek philosopher Socrates, is a form of inquiry and debate between individuals with opposing viewpoints based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas...
). A
rhetorical questionA rhetorical question is a figure of speech in the form of a question posed for its persuasive effect without the expectation of a reply. Rhetorical questions encourage the listener to think about what the answer to the question must be. When a speaker states, "How much longer must our people...
is asked in order to make a point, and does not expect an answer (often the answer is implied or obvious). Pre-suppositional questions, such as "Have you stopped beating your wife?" may be used as a joke or to embarrass an audience, because any answer a person could give would imply more information than he was willing to affirm. Questions can also be titles of works of art and literature (e.g.
Leo TolstoyLev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
's short story
How Much Land Does a Man Need?How Much Land Does a Man Require? is an 1886 short story by Leo Tolstoy about a man who, in his lust for land, forfeits everything.-Synopsis:...
and the
movieA film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
What About Bob?What About Bob? is a 1991 comedy film directed by Frank Oz, and starring Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss. Murray plays Bob Wiley, a multiphobic psychiatric patient who follows his successful and egotistical psychiatrist Dr. Leo Marvin on vacation...
), or a scholarly monograph (e.g.
Who Asked the First Question?Who Asked the First Question? The Origins of Human Choral Singing, Intelligence, Language and Speech is a book on human evolution and the origins of human choral singing. It was written by Joseph Jordania, ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist, Honorary Fellow of the University of...
). McKenzie lists 17 types of questions in his
"Questioning Toolkit" and suggests that thinkers must orchestrate and combine these types in his article
"Punchy Question Combinations". Examples of his question types include the
irreverent question, the
apparently irrelevant question, the
hypothetical question and the
unanswerable question. Questions can be infelicitous as well, based on incorrect and illogical premises (e.g. "Why do cats have green wings?").
In research projects
- Descriptive question, used primarily to describe the existence of some thing or process.
- Relational question, designed to look at the relationships between two or more variables.
- Causal question, designed to determine whether one or more variables causes or affects one or more outcome variables.
In surveys
- Dichotomous questions, usually these questions require yes/no answers or require a person to answer by choosing an option(s) from a multiple choice of possible answers.
- Nominal questions, these types of questions are designed to inquire about a level of quantitative measure. Usually these questions form correlations between a number and a concept. For example:
Occupational Class:
1= Moderate
2= Severe
3= etc.
- Qualifying questions (also called filter questions, or contingency questions) These types of questions are designed to determine if the individual answering the question needs to continue on to answer subsequent questions.
Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Categories of questions)
- Knowledge: who, what, when, where, why, how
In journalism, the Five Ws is a concept in news style, research, and in police investigations that are regarded as basics in information-gathering. It is a formula for getting the "full" story on something...
..? Describe...?
- Comprehension: retell...
- Application: How is...an example of...?; how is...related to...?; why is...significant?
- Analysis: What are the parts or features of...? Classify...according to...;
- Synthesis: What would you infer from...? What ideas can you add to...? How would you design a new..? What would happen if you combined...? What solutions would you suggest for...?
- Evaluation: Do you agree that...? What do you think about...? What is the most important..? Place the following in order of priority...? How would you decide about...? What criteria would you use to assess...?
Grammar
Languages may use both
syntaxIn linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
and
prosodyIn linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of...
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 voiceIn linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody...
while speaking. Some syntactic devices used by languages for marking questions include:
- A marked word order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
different from the usual word order in statements (see wh-movementWh-movement is a syntactic phenomenon found in many languages around the world, in which interrogative words or phrases show a special word order. Unlike ordinary phrases, such wh-words appear at the beginning of an interrogative clause...
). For example, FrenchFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
speakers may ask questions using inversionIn linguistics, grammatical inversion is any of a number of different distinct grammatical constructions in the languages of the world. There are three main uses in the literature which, unfortunately, have little if any overlap either formally or typologically: syntactic inversion, thematic...
, and English speakers may do so in sentences with auxiliary verbIn linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
s (as in "Do you want...?" as opposed to "You do want....").
- An interrogative mood
In linguistics and grammar, the interrogative mood is an epistemic grammatical mood used for asking questions by inflecting the main verb...
or some other verb inflectionIn grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
such as the subjunctive moodIn grammar, the subjunctive mood is a verb mood typically used in subordinate clauses to express various states of irreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred....
- A grammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
(cf. Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
ka, MandarinStandard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
ma)
- Replacing a word in a declarative sentence with an interrogative word
In linguistics, an interrogative word is a function word used for the item interrupted in an information statement. Interrogative words are sometimes called wh-words because most of English interrogative words start with wh-...
(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 ( 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 linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody...
- (In written language) distinctive punctuation, such as the question mark
The question mark , is a punctuation mark that replaces the full stop at the end of an interrogative sentence in English and many other languages. The question mark is not used for indirect questions...
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?".
SpanishSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
changes the word order only when interrogative pronouns are involved (not in yes-no questions). In
ChineseThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, 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 the
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
or
Cyrillic alphabetThe Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
, a
question markThe question mark , is a punctuation mark that replaces the full stop at the end of an interrogative sentence in English and many other languages. The question mark is not used for indirect questions...
at the end of the sentence identifies questions orthographically. In
SpanishSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, 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
FrenchFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
"
si" and the
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
"
doch") 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
predicateThere are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar. Traditional grammar tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies. The other understanding of predicates is inspired from work in predicate calculus...
can come before the
subjectThe subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
. An interrogative sentence is one such one; for example, in "what did you buy?", the predicate "what" comes before the subject "you".
Types
- Yes/no-question
In linguistics, a yes–no question, formally known as a polar question, is a question whose expected answer is either "yes" or "no". Formally, they present an exclusive disjunction, a pair of alternatives of which only one is acceptable. In English, such questions can be formed in both positive...
s
- Yes/no questions can be answered with a "yes" or "no"
Yes and no are two words for expressing affirmatives and negatives respectively in English . Early Middle English had a four-form system, but Modern English has reduced this to a two-form system consisting of 'yes' and 'no'. Some languages do not answer yes-no questions with single words meaning...
, hence the name.
- Wh-questions
- Wh-questions use interrogative word
In linguistics, an interrogative word is a function word used for the item interrupted in an information statement. Interrogative words are sometimes called wh-words because most of English interrogative words start with wh-...
s to request information. In some languages, wh-movementWh-movement is a syntactic phenomenon found in many languages around the world, in which interrogative words or phrases show a special word order. Unlike ordinary phrases, such wh-words appear at the beginning of an interrogative clause...
may be involved. They cannot be answered with a yes or no.
- Tag question
A question tag or tag question is a grammatical structure in which a declarative statement or an imperative is turned into a question by adding an interrogative fragment . For example, in the sentence "You're John, aren't you?", the statement "You're John" is turned into a question by the tag...
s
- Tag questions are a grammatical structure in which a declarative statement or an imperative is turned into a question by adding an interrogative fragment (the "tag"), such as "right"—for example, "You remembered the eggs, right?" Tag questions can be answered with a yes or no.
Questions and answers
The simplest questions implicitly or explicitly request information from a range (finite or infinite) of alternatives. When information purporting to be that requested is presented back to the questioner, the question is said to be
answered. The information thus presented is called an
answer. Answers may be
correct or
incorrectIncorrect means to be not correct and may also refer to:* Politically incorrect* Incorrectly formatted data, a computer error-See also:* Correctness * Anomalously numbered roads in Great Britain...
. They are incorrect if they present
falseFalse or falsehood may refer to:*False *Lie or falsehood, a type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement*Falsity or falsehood, in law, deceitfulness by one party that results in damage to another...
informationInformation in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
. If they present information from outside the proffered alternatives, they may be called wrong or simply inappropriate or irrelevant. This depends on the context, as do several other possibilities: Sometimes "I don't know" is an acceptable answer, sometimes even a correct answer. The same is true of "None of the above" and "There is no answer." An answer is the, or a, correct answer, if it presents
trueTrue may refer to:* Truth, the state of being in accord with fact or reality-Music:* True , 1996* True , 2002* True , 1983** "True"...
information which falls within the determined range of alternatives. Questions of this simplest sort usually begin with
Who,
what,
which,
where,
when,
does/
do,
is/
are.
Other questions do not so easily fit this mould. For example, questions beginning "Why" and "How" often request any information at all that will alleviate certain confusion in a person who wants to ask that question. Here the manner in which the information is presented might be more important than which information is presented; the questioner may even already know all of the information contained in the right answer, and merely needs it to be expressed in a more useful form.
Ultimately, the interrogative pronouns (those beginning with
wh in addition to the word
how), derive from the
Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
root
kwo- or
kwi, the former of which was reflected in Proto-Germanic as
χwa- or
khwa-.. In
how (Old English
hū, from Proto-Germanic
χwō), the
w merged into the lave of the word, as it did in Old Frisian
hū, hō (Dutch
hoe "how"), but it can still be seen in Old Saxon
hwō, Old High German
hwuo (German
wie "how"). The Proto-Indo-European root directly originated the
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and
RomanceThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
form
qu- in words such as Latin
quī ("which") and
quando ("when"). In English, the gradual change of voiceless stops into voiceless fricatives (phase 1 of
Grimm's lawGrimm's law , named for Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European stops as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC...
) during the development of
Germanic languagesThe Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
is responsible for "wh-" of interrogatives. Although some varieties of
American EnglishAmerican English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
and various
ScottishScottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not be considered distinct from the Scots language. It is always considered distinct from Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language....
dialects still preserve the original sound (i.e. [hw] rather than [w]), the majority only preserve the [w]. The words
who,
whom,
whose,
what and
why, can all be considered to come from a single Old English word
hwā, reflecting its masculine and feminine nominative (
hwā), dative (
hwām), genitive (
hwæs), neuter nominative and accusative (
hwæt), and instrumental (masculine and neuter singular) (
hwȳ, later
hwī) respectively. Other interrogative words, such as
which,
how,
where,
whence as well as the now archaic
whither derive either from compounds (
which coming from a compound of
hwā [what, who] and
līc [like]), or other words from the same root (
how deriving from
hū).
Learning
Questions are used from the most elementary stage of learning to original research. In the
scientific methodScientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
, a question often forms the basis of the investigation and can be considered a transition between the observation and hypothesis stages. Students of all ages use questions in their learning of topics, and the skill of having learners creating "investigatable" questions is a central part of
inquiry educationInquiry education is a student-centered method of education focused on asking questions. Students are encouraged to ask questions which are meaningful to them, and which do not necessarily have easy answers; teachers are encouraged to avoid giving answers when this is possible, and in any case to...
. The
Socratic methodThe Socratic method , named after the classical Greek philosopher Socrates, is a form of inquiry and debate between individuals with opposing viewpoints based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas...
of questioning student responses may be used by a teacher to lead the student towards the truth without direct instruction, and also helps students to form logical conclusions.
A widespread and accepted use of questions in an educational context is the assessment of students' knowledge through exams.
Philosophical questions
The
philosophicalPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
questions are
conceptThe word concept is used in ordinary language as well as in almost all academic disciplines. Particularly in philosophy, psychology and cognitive sciences the term is much used and much discussed. WordNet defines concept: "conception, construct ". However, the meaning of the term concept is much...
ual, not factual questions. There are questions that are not fully answered by any other. Philosophy deals with questions that arise when people reflect on their lives and their world. Some philosophical questions are practical: for example, "Is
euthanasiaEuthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
justifiable?", "Does the state have the right to censor pornography or restrict tobacco advertising?", "To what extent are Mäori and
PäkehäPākehā is a Māori language word for New Zealanders who are "of European descent". They are mostly descended from British and to a lesser extent Irish settlers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although some Pākehā have Dutch, Scandinavian, German, Yugoslav or other ancestry...
today responsible for decisions made by their ancestors?".
Other philosophical questions are more
theoreticalThe English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
, although they often arise through thinking about practical issues. The questions just listed, for example, may prompt more general philosophical questions about the circumstances under which it may be morally justifiable to take a life, or about the extent to which the state may restrict the liberty of the individual. Some fascinating, 'classic', questions of philosophy are speculative and theoretical and concern the nature of knowledge, reality and human existence: for example, "What, if anything, can be known with certainty?", "Is the mind essentially non-physical?", "Are values absolute or relative?", "Does the universe need explanation in terms of a Supreme Intelligence?", "What, if anything, is the meaning or purpose of human existence?". Finally, the philosophical questions are typically about conceptual issues; they are often questions about our concepts and the relation between our concepts and the world they represent.
Origins of questioning behavior
Joseph JordaniaJoseph Jordania is an Australian-Georgian ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist. In some early publications his name was spelled as Zhordania...
suggested that the ability to ask questions is the central cognitive element that distinguishes human and animal cognitive abilities. Enculturated apes
KanziKanzi , also known by the lexigram , is a male bonobo who has been featured in several studies on great ape language. According to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist who has studied the bonobo throughout her life, Kanzi has exhibited advanced linguistic aptitude.- Biography :Born to Lorel and...
,
WashoeWashoe or washo could refer to:*Washoe -- a chimpanzee that was taught by humans to speak in American Sign Language*Before it was made a Territory, Nevada was popularly known as Washoe*Washoe County, Nevada*Washoe Lake - lake in Nevada...
,
SarahSarah is an enculturated research chimpanzee whose cognitive skills are documented in The Mind of an Ape, by David Premack and Ann James Premack . Sarah was one of nine chimpanzees in David Premack's psychology laboratory in Pennsylvania. Sarah was born in Africa in 1962. She first worked in...
and a few others who underwent extensive language training programs (with the use of gestures and other visual forms of communications) successfully learned to
answer quite complex questions and requests (including question words "who" what", "where"), although so far they failed to learn how to
ask questions themselves. For example,
David and Anne PremackDavid Premack is currently emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He was educated at the University of Minnesota when logical positivism was in full bloom. The departments of Psychology and Philosophy were closely allied...
wrote: "Though she [Sarah] understood the question, she did not herself ask any questions — unlike the child who asks interminable questions, such as What that? Who making noise? When Daddy come home? Me go Granny's house? Where puppy? Sarah never delayed the departure of her trainer after her lessons by asking where the trainer was going, when she was returning, or anything else". The ability to ask questions is often assessed in relation to comprehension of syntactic structures.
JordaniaJordânia is a Brazilian municipality located in the northeast of the state of Minas Gerais. The city belongs to the mesoregion of Jequitinhonha and to the microregion of Almenara. As of 2007 the population was 10,751 in a total area of 549 km²....
suggested that this approach is not justified, as (1) questioning is primarily a cognitive ability, and (2) questions can be asked without the use of syntactic structures (with the use of specific
intonationIntonation may refer to:*Intonation , the variation of tone used when speaking*Intonation , a musician's realization of pitch accuracy, or the pitch accuracy of a musical instrument*Intonation Music Festival, held in Chicago...
only). It is widely accepted, that the first questions are asked by humans during their early infancy, at the pre-syntactic, one word stage of
language developmentLanguage development is a process starting early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry. Children's language development moves from simple to complex. Infants start without language. Yet by four months of age, babies can read lips and...
, with the use of question
intonationIn linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody...
.
See also
- Debate
Debate or debating is a method of interactive and representational argument. Debate is a broader form of argument than logical argument, which only examines consistency from axiom, and factual argument, which only examines what is or isn't the case or rhetoric which is a technique of persuasion...
- Doubt
Doubt, a status between belief and disbelief, involves uncertainty or distrust or lack of sureness of an alleged fact, an action, a motive, or a decision. Doubt brings into question some notion of a perceived "reality", and may involve delaying or rejecting relevant action out of concerns for...
- Exclamation
Exclamation may refer to:* Exclamation mark, the punctuation mark "!"* Exclamation, an emphatic sentence* Exclamation, an emphatic interjection* Exclamation, a statement against penal interest in criminal law* Exclamation, a fragrance by Coty, Inc....
- Inquiry
An inquiry is any process that has the aim of augmenting knowledge, resolving doubt, or solving a problem. A theory of inquiry is an account of the various types of inquiry and a treatment of the ways that each type of inquiry achieves its aim.-Deduction:...
- Interrogation
Interrogation is interviewing as commonly employed by officers of the police, military, and Intelligence agencies with the goal of extracting a confession or obtaining information. Subjects of interrogation are often the suspects, victims, or witnesses of a crime...
- Interrogative word
In linguistics, an interrogative word is a function word used for the item interrupted in an information statement. Interrogative words are sometimes called wh-words because most of English interrogative words start with wh-...
- Interrogatory
- Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
- Problem
A problem is an obstacle, impediment, difficulty or challenge, or any situation that invites resolution; the resolution of which is recognized as a solution or contribution toward a known purpose or goal...
- Proposition
In logic and philosophy, the term proposition refers to either the "content" or "meaning" of a meaningful declarative sentence or the pattern of symbols, marks, or sounds that make up a meaningful declarative sentence...
- Question mark
The question mark , is a punctuation mark that replaces the full stop at the end of an interrogative sentence in English and many other languages. The question mark is not used for indirect questions...
- Rhetorical question
A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in the form of a question posed for its persuasive effect without the expectation of a reply. Rhetorical questions encourage the listener to think about what the answer to the question must be. When a speaker states, "How much longer must our people...
- Sentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
- Sentence function
In linguistics, sentence function refers to a speaker's purpose in uttering a specific sentence, phrase, or clause. Whether a listener is present or not is sometimes irrelevant. It answers the question: "Why has this been said?" The four basic sentence functions in the world's languages include the...
- Statement
Statement may refer to:* A kind of expression in language *Statement , declarative sentence that is either true or false*Statement , the smallest standalone element of an imperative programming language...
- Truth
Truth has a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with fact or reality. It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common usage, it also means constancy or sincerity in action or character...
- Who Asked the First Question?
Who Asked the First Question? The Origins of Human Choral Singing, Intelligence, Language and Speech is a book on human evolution and the origins of human choral singing. It was written by Joseph Jordania, ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist, Honorary Fellow of the University of...