Question

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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 is provided with an answer.

Questions are normally put or asked using interrogative sentences. But they can also be put by imperative sentences, which normally express commands: "Tell me what 2 + 2 is"; conversely, some expressions, such as "Would you pass the butter?", have the grammatical form of questions but function as requests for action, not for answers.

Varieties of Questions

Questions have a number of uses. 'Raising a question' may guide the questioner along an avenue of research (see Socratic method). A rhetorical question is asked in order to make a point, and does not expect an answer (often the answer is implied or obvious). Presuppositional 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 Tolstoy's short story How Much Land Does a Man Need? and the movie What About Bob?).

Grammar

In grammar, most languages distinguish interrogative sentences, which put questions from declarative sentences that state propositions, by syntax. Some devices used by languages for marking questions include:

A different tonal pattern (often a raised tone near the end of the sentence)
A marked word order different from the usual word order in statements (see wh-movement)
An interrogative mood or some other verb inflection such as the subjunctive mood
A grammatical particle (cf Japanese ka, Mandarin Chinese ma)
(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 the Latin alphabet, 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?" "Don't you have a passport?" are properly answered with "No," despite apparently asking opposite questions.

Various languages have different particles (e.g., French "si"; German "doch") that head their answer.

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.

Example: Did you pick the car up from the shop?

Questions and answers

The simplest questions implicitly or explicitly request information from a certain 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 right or wrong. They are wrong if they present false information. If they present information from outside the profferred 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 right answer. The same is true of "None of the above" and "There is no answer." An answer is the, or a, right answer, if it presents 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 mold. 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 interregotive pronouns (those beginning wh in addition to the word how), derive from the Proto-Indo-European root k^wo- or k^wi, the former of which was reflected in Proto-Germanic as x^wa- or h^wa-.^{[citation needed]} The Proto-Indo-European root directly originated the Latin and Romance form qu- in words such as Latin qualis ("which") and quando ("when"). In English, the gradual change of voiceless stops into voiceless fricatives (phase 1 of Grimm's law) during the development of Germanic languages is responsible for "wh-" of interrogatives. Although some varieties of Received Pronunciation and various Scottish 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(hwæt), and instrumental of all genders (hwȳ, later hwī) respectively. Other interrogative words, such as which, how, where, as well as the now archaic whither derive either from compounds (which coming from a compound of hwā[what, who] and lic[like]), or other words from the same root (how deriving from hū).

Buddha: "There are these four ways of answering questions. Which four? There are questions that should be answered categorically [straightforwardly yes, no, this, that]. There are questions that should be answered with an analytical (qualified) answer [defining or redefining the terms]. There are questions that should be answered with a counter-question. There are questions that should be put aside. These are the four ways of answering questions." Source

Learning

Questions are used from the most elementary stage of learning to original research. In the scientific method, 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 education. The Socratic method 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 student's knowledge through exams.

External links

FAQ 2.0 web 2.0 style service for question.
Asking Questions More Open-endedly and More Creatively examines the "power of questioning".
Ask and all Your questions will be treated well.

References

The Logic of Questions and Answers (1976), by Nuel D. Belnap and Thomas B. Steele.