Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Any discussion of questions and questioning needs to distinguish between questions as a linguistic form and the various social actions that are accomplished through this form. Questions, or “interrogatives,” can be formed in a variety of ways. One type of question uses a specific question word: “which,” “when,” “why,” “where,” “who,” “whose,” “whom,” or “how,” forming what is called a wh-question , e.g., “Who was that lady?,” “Where did you play basketball?,” “Met whom?” Another question type is the yes/no question , i.e., a question to which a “yes” or “no” answer is generally expected. These questions are usually formed in English by inversion of subject and auxiliary, e.g., “Is Al here today?” If there is no auxiliary, the “do auxiliary” is added. Increasingly in informal oral English, the auxiliary is left out, e.g., “You home?” Other languages use phrases or particles, rather than inversion, to indicate that a preceding or following utterance is a yes/no question. Yes/no questions can also be formed syntactically in the same way that declarative statements are formed, using upward instead of downward intonation, e.g., “You're home?” Quirk et al. (1985) call these declarative questions . Other types of questions are tag questions , which are a type of yes/no question, e.g., “They're a lovely family now aren't they?” and alternative questions , e.g., “Didju say wide ... log in or subscribe to read full text