Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: interrogative tail or head ?

From:Muke Tever <alrivera@...>
Date:Monday, June 11, 2001, 13:23
From: "claudio" <claudio.soboll@...>
> questions are often psychologically unwelcome, not only due to their > forcing character to answer, but also due to their surprising > character (only in spoken speech). > "surprising" due to the appearance of question marks (or raising > intonation) at the end of a sentence. > even the chinese interrogativ-particle "ne" apears at the end. > for many particles , the final apearence is usefull, because we > humans talk sometimes "brainstorming-like" without having the complete > sentence we want to tell our listeners in mind, > before we open our mouth. > but doesnt exist the interrogative intention of a speaker always in mind > *before* man formulates the question ? > so how come that our interrogative particles dont appearn at the head > of a sentence ?
Well, one answer is: they do. In English the normal yes/no question form adds a form of "do" at the beginning: He likes cheese. - Does he like cheese? - Do you know that for sure? - He hates provolone, doesn't he? Or else it moves "to be" or other auxverbs to the front: The sky is falling. - Has it been? - Is it getting worse? - Would you fetch me an umbrella? For other kinds of questions, there's also "wh-" question words that go at the beginning. He likes cheese. - What does he like? - Why does he like it? - How did that happen? - How come he told you? Of course these can get moved around for emphasis ("He likes *what*?") or in [And of course in Spanish there's the "opening question mark" <¿>, which marks the beginning of a question.] *Muke!

Reply

claudio <claudio.soboll@...>