Acquire information is very important to the human species. Apparently, most if not all languages have developed some particular means dedicated to eliciting information, henceforth called interrogative constructions. An interrogative construction is a grammatical form used to ask a question.

1. HUL464
INTERROGATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS
SAJEED MAHABOOB
2011ME1111
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2. INTRODUCTION
 Acquire information is very important to the human species. Apparently,
most if not all languages have developed some particular means dedicated
to eliciting information, henceforth called interrogative constructions.
An interrogative construction is a grammatical form used to ask a question.
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3. TYPES OF INTERROGATIVES
 Polar interrogatives (‘yes/no question’, ‘closed’)
ex: Does a platypus lay eggs?
 Constituent interrogatives
(‘wh’, ‘informational questions’, ‘open’, ‘special’, ‘partial’)
ex: What is a platypus?
 Alternative interrogatives
(to query which element of a set of alternatives makes an open sentence true)
ex: Is a platypus a mammal or a bird?
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4. INTRODUCTION
 There are seven basic strategies of deriving interrogatives, some of them being restricted
to particular types of interrogatives:
1. Intonation
2. Interrogative particles
3. Interrogative tags
4. Disjunctive constructions
5. The order of constituents
6. Verbal inflection
7. Interrogative words
Some of these strategies can occur in combination, others may be mutually exclusive.
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5. INTRODUCTION
 POLAR INTERROGATIVES
The expected answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
The speaker asks the addressee about the truth value of the proposition expressed
by the relevant interrogative clause.
 Polar interrogatives may have either positive or negative polarity.
A. Is 761 a prime number? (Unbiased case)
(no expectations with respect to the answer)
B. Can’t you stay a little longer? (Biased case)
(either a positive or a negative answer)
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6. INTRODUCTION
 CONSTITUENT INTERROGATIVES
We find an interrogative word (who, what, when, etc.) in the position of the
unknown information.
Speaker expects the addressee to supply adequate information for these variables.
Ex: What is the Bermuda triangle?
 There are interrogative with one or with multiple interrogative words.
A. Who opened the door?
B. Who did what to whom?
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7. INTRODUCTION
 ALTERNATIVE INTERROGATIVES
With these interrogatives the speaker offers the addressee a list of possible
answers from which he is supposed to choose the correct one:
Ex: Would you like tea or coffee?
Are you going to gym?
Egg is vegetarian or non-vegetarian?
Mostly optional answers.
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8. POLAR INTERROGATIVES
 The expected answer in the case of polar interrogatives is either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The speaker asks the
addressee about the truth value of the proposition expressed by the relevant interrogative clause.
 INTONATION
The intonation contour most widely employed for polar interrogatives, and in fact, interrogatives in
general, is a rising one with the rise usually being placed towards the end of the contour.
Ex Italian: Suo marito è ancora malato. -Statement
Suo marito è ancora /malato? -Question
Ex Hindi: कु बेर ने फितूर फिल्म देखा है. -Statement
कु बेर ने फितूर फिल्म देखा है ? -Question
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9. POLAR INTERROGATIVES
 INTERROGATIVE PARTICLE
Interrogative particles are expressions like French est-ce que, Polish czy, Finnish kö, Mandarin ma,
Slavic li, Bengali ki, etc.
 Used after intonation
 The most widely employed device
Ex: Japanese
(a) yamada-san wa ginkoo de hataraite-imasu.
yamada-Mr. TOP bank at working
‘Mr. Yamada works at the bank.’
(b) yamada-san wa ginkoo de hataraite-imasu ka?
yamada-Mr. TOP bank at working
‘Does Mr. Yamada work at the bank?’
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10. POLAR INTERROGATIVES
Ex: Bengali
ki beral pakhita dhorechilo?
IP cat bird.SG caught
‘Did the cat catch the bird?’
Ex: Russian
ital li ty ètu knigu?
read IP you this book
‘Have you read this book?’
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11. POLAR INTERROGATIVES
 INTERROGATIVE TAGS
Another strategy for marking polar interrogatives are the so called interrogative tags.
Ex: English
He has gone to Tokyo, hasn’t he?
Ex: Bengali
beral pakhita dhorechilo, noy ki?
‘The cat caught the bird, didn’t it?’
Ex: Russian
Ty ego sly₁al, pravda?
‘You heard him, didn’t you?’
Ex: German
Er ist sehr reich, nicht wahr?
‘He is very rich, isn’t he?’ 17-Feb-16
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12. POLAR INTERROGATIVES
 DISJUNCTION
Normally used for alternative interrogatives.
Now a possible device for posing the polar interrogatives.
An affirmative clause and its negative counterpart are being used to form such interrogatives.
Ex: Mandarin
zh˜ng-s˜n xohuan ho ji,, duì bu duì?
Zhang-san like drink wine right NEG right
‘Zhang-san likes to drink wine, right?’
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13. POLAR INTERROGATIVES
Ex: Hindi
सूरज बहुत अच्छा आदमी है। है ना?
Suraj is a very nice man. Right?
Ex: Bhojpuri
हम बबह्ने कॉलेज जा तानी। ठीक बा?
I am going to college tomorrow. Okay?
Ex: English
Your father is very old, right?
Ex: Nepali
ननश्चय साथ भन्न सक्दैन। मिल्यो?
Cannot say it confidently. Understand?
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14. POLAR INTERROGATIVES
 ORDER OF CONSTITUENTS
One of the strategies of marking polar interrogatives that languages across the world are not
particularly likely to manifest is a change in the order of their basic constituents (inversion).
English Ex: John is a policeman.
Is John a policeman?
French Ex: John est un policier. -Does not valid
John un policier ? -Since French is VSO in question form, it kicked out.
Inversion of the verb-fronting type can only occur in languages whose basic word order type is
either SVO or SOV; it is ruled out for VSO-languages.
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15. POLAR INTERROGATIVES
 In English, inversion is restricted to auxiliaries and modals and do-support is
necessary to convert clauses lacking such operators into polar interrogatives:
Ex: John phoned me yesterday.
Did John phone you yesterday?
 There are only seven examples of inverting languages to be found and six out of
these seven languages come from Europe.
(English, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Rumanian, Russian).
The only non-European language in this sample to demonstrate inversion is
Malay,
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16. POLAR INTERROGATIVES
 VERBAL INFLECTION
Relatively rare in terms of frequency.
The strategy employed by Kalaallisut and Eskimo language (Inuit).
Special verbal morphology
Exclusively dedicated to interrogative formation so that it makes sense to assume an interrogative
mood for this group of languages.
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17. POLAR INTERROGATIVES
 Ex: takuvoq ‘He sees.’ वह देखता है
takua? ‘Does he see?’ क्या वह देखता है?
 Ex: nerivutit ‘you ate’ तुमने खाया
nerivit? ‘Did you eat?’ क्या तुमने खाया?
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18. CONSTITUENTS INTERROGATIVES
 In the constituents interrogatives we find an interrogative word (who,
what, when, etc.) in the position of the unknown information.
Speaker expects the addressee to supply adequate information for these
variables.
Ex: What is the ISIS?
 There could be interrogative with one or with multiple interrogative
words.
A. Who opened the door?
B. Who did what to whom?
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19. CONSTITUENTS INTERROGATIVES
 Strategies discussed in the previous section, can also be found with these
interrogatives but they play a less important role in this domain and are normally
optional.
 Therefore I will discuss the constituents interrogative in different aspects.
1. The position of interrogative words
2. Key properties of interrogative words
3. Additional uses of interrogative words
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20. CONSTITUENTS INTERROGATIVES
 THE POSITION OF INTERROGATIVE WORDS
According to the position of interrogative words, languages fall into three types:
1. Those that put interrogative words obligatorily in clause-initial position.
(fronting languages )
2. Those in which interrogative words occupy the same position as the constituent questioned.
(in-situ languages)
3. Those languages that allow either of these two positions.
(optional fronting languages)
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21. CONSTITUENTS INTERROGATIVES
 Examples:
Finnish
A. Maija ottaa omenaa.
Maija take.3SG apple.PAR
‘Maija is taking an apple.’
B. Mitä Maija ottaa?
what.PAR Maija take.3SG
‘What is Maija taking?’
Mandarin
A. Hufei m1i-le y􀀀-b.n-sh􀀀
Hufai buy-ASP one-CL-book
‘Hufai bought a book.’
B. Hufei m1i-le shénme?
Hufai buy-ASP what
‘What did Hufai buy?’
Swahili
A. A-li-fika lini?
3SG-PAST-arrive when
‘When did s/he arrive?’
B. kwa nini chakula ki-me-
chelewa?
why food 3SG-PERF-late
‘Why is the food late?’
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22. CONSTITUENTS INTERROGATIVES
 Additional fronting languages include English, German, Hebrew, Supyire, Yoruba,
Zapotec.
 Further examples of in-situ languages are Indonesian, Japanese, Lezgian and
Mandarin
 Egyptian Arabic, Kannada, Korean or Palauan belong to the group of optional
fronting languages.
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23. CONSTITUENTS INTERROGATIVES
 KEY PROPERTIES OF INTERROGATIVE WORDS
Languages can vary greatly in the number of interrogative words they possess.
Nevertheless, one typically finds two basic kinds of interrogative words.
1. Those that substitute for the core arguments of a predication (who, what), and which inquire about the
central participants of the situations denoted by the relevant clauses.
2. Interrogative words that seek circumstantial information of the situation in question and which,
syntactically speaking, one would have to analyze as adjuncts.
(a) Who invited him? / Who did he invite?
(b) When / where did he arrive?
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24. CONSTITUENTS INTERROGATIVES
 MULTIPLE OCCURRENCES OF INTERROGATIVE WORDS
Particularly interesting parameters of cross-linguistic variation can be observed with those
clauses that contain not just one interrogative word, but multiple occurrences of them.
Ex: Who did what to whom?
 Based on position of occurrences
Ex: (a) Ram gave the book to Radha. सूरज ने कु बेर को गेंद ददया
(b) Who gave what to whom? ककस ने ककस को क्या ददया?
 Additional languages following the English pattern include German, Dutch, Swedish, Italian,
Spanish.
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25. CONSTITUENTS INTERROGATIVES
 Well defined order
Languages in which multiple occurrences of interrogative words all occur clause-initially,
although often in a well defined order.
Such multiple fronting languages are most likely a proper subset of fronting languages.
Ex: Bulgarian
Koj kogo e vidjal?
who whom saw.3SG
‘Who saw whom?’
Polish
Co komu Monika da􀀀a?
what to whom Monica gave
‘What did Monica give to whom?’
Russian
Kto kogo ljubit?
who whom loves
‘Who loves whom?’
Very strong requirement to front all interrogative words.
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26. CONSTITUENTS INTERROGATIVES
 ADDITIONAL USES OF INTERROGATIVE WORDS
In most European languages interrogative words are also used as relative
pronouns.
Ex: German
a. Wer kommt da?
‘Who is coming?’
b. Da kommt wer.
‘Someone is coming.’
Languages may either use interrogative words as a source for the development
of indefinites or simply use the same form for either function.
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28. REFERENCES
 Ackema, Peter & Neeleman, Ad. 1998. “Optimal ques-tions”. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 16:3,
443-490.
 Baker, Carl Lee. 1970. “Notes on the description of English questions”. Foundations of Language 6, 197-
219.
 Bazin, Louis. 1984. “La particule interrogative -mi en Turc”. In: Valentin, Paul (ed.) L’interrogation. Actes du
colloque tenu les 19 et 20 decembre 1983 par le Department de Linguistique de l’Université de Paris-
Sorbonne, 89-94.
 Chang, Suk-Jin. 1996. Korean. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
 Cheng, Lisa Lai-Shen. 1997. On the typology of wh-questions. New York: Garland.
 Chisholm, William S. & Milic, Louis T. & Greppin, John A.C. (eds.). 1984. Interrogativity: A colloquium on
the grammar, typology and pragmatics of ques-tions in seven diverse languages. Amsterdam: Ben-jamins.
 Comrie, Bernard. 1981. Language universals and lin-guistic typology. Oxford: Blackwell.
 Comrie, Bernard. 1984. “Russian”. In: Chisholm, Wil-liam S. et al. (eds.).
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