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Concept
Interrogative
Summary
An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is sick". Also, the additional question mark closing the statement assures that the reader is informed of the interrogative mood. Interrogative clauses may sometimes be embedded within a phrase, for example: "Paul knows who is sick", where the interrogative clause "who is sick" serves as complement of the embedding verb "know".
Languages vary in how they form interrogatives. When a language has a dedicated interrogative inflectional form, it is often referred to as interrogative grammatical mood. Interrogative mood or other interrogative forms may be denoted by the glossing abbreviation .
Interrogative sentences are generally divided between yes–no questions, which ask whether or not something is the case (and invite an answer of the yes/no type), and wh-questions, which specify the information being asked about using a word like which, who, how, etc.
An intermediate form is the choice question, disjunctive question or alternative question, which presents a number of alternative answers, such as "Do you want tea or coffee?"
Negative questions are formed from negative sentences, as in "Aren't you coming?" and "Why does he not answer?"
Tag questions are questions "tagged" onto the end of sentences to invite confirmation, as in "She left earlier, didn't she?"
Indirect questions (or interrogative content clauses) are subordinate clauses used within sentences to refer to a question (as opposed to direct questions, which are interrogative sentences themselves). An example of an indirect question is where Jack is in the sentence "I wonder where Jack is." English and many other languages do not use inversion in indirect questions, even though they would in the corresponding direct question ("Where is Jack?"), as described in the following section.
Official source
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