Interrogative

Key takeaways

Interrogative belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Interrogative to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Interrogative from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

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 int.

Question types 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.

Features Languages may use both syntax and prosody to distinguish interrogative sentences (which pose questions) from declarative sentences (which state propositions). Syntax refers to grammatical changes, such as changing word order or adding question words; prosody refers to changes in intonation while speaking. Some languages also mark interrogatives morphologically, i.e. by inflection of the verb. A given language may use one or more of these methods in combination.

Inflection Certain languages mark interrogative sentences by using a particular inflection of the verb (this may be described as an interrogative mood of the verb). Languages with some degree of this feature include Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Greenlandic, Nenets, Central Alaskan Yup'ik, Turkish, Finnish, Korean and Venetian. In most varieties of Venetian, interrogative verb endings have developed out of what was originally a subject pronoun, placed after the verb in questions by way of inversion (see following section). For example, Old Venetian magnè-vu? ("do you eat?", formed by inversion from vu magnè "you eat") has developed into the modern magneto? or magnèu?. This form can now also be used with overt subjects: Voaltri magnèo co mi? ("do you eat with me?", literally "you eat-you with me?"). In Turkish, the verb takes the interrogative particle mı (also mi, mu, mü according to the last vowel of the word – see vowel harmony), with other personal or verbal suffixes following after that particle:

Geliyorum. ("I am coming.") → Geliyor muyum? ("Am I coming?") Geliyordum. ("I was coming.") → Geliyor muydum? ("Was I coming?") Geldim. ("I came.") → Geldim mi? ("Did I come?") Evlisin. ("You are married.") → Evli misin? ("Are you married?") In Central Alaskan Yup'ik, verbs are conjugated in what is called the interrogative mood if one wishes to pose a content question:

Taiciquten. ("You sg. will come.") → Qaku taiciqsit? ("When (future) will you come?) Qimugta ner'uq neqmek. ("The dog is eating some fish.") → Camek ner'a qimugta? ("What is the dog eating?) Yes/no questions in Yup'ik, however, are formed by attaching the enclitic -qaa to the end of the first word of the sentence, which is what is being questioned:

Taiciquten-qaa? ("Will you come?") Qimugta-qaa ner'uq neqmek? ("Is the dog eating some fish?") Further details on verb inflection can be found in the articles on the languages listed above (or their grammars).

Syntax The main syntactic devices used in various languages for marking questions are changes in word order and addition of interrogative words or particles. In some modern Western European languages, questions are marked by switching the verb with the subject (inversion), thus changing the canonical word order pattern from SVO to VSO. For example, in German:

Er liebt mich. ("he loves me"; declarative) Liebt er mich? ("does he love me?", literally "loves he me?"; interrogative) Similar patterns are found in other Germanic languages and French. In the case of Modern English, inversion is used, but can only take place with a limited group of verbs (called auxiliaries or "special verbs"). In sentences where no such verb is otherwise present, the auxiliary do (does, did) is introduced to enable the inversion (for details see do-support, and English grammar § Questions. Formerly, up to the late 16th century, English used inversion freely with all verbs, as German still does.) For example:

They went away. (normal declarative sentence) They did go away. (declarative sentence re-formed using do-support) Did they go away? (interrogative formed by inversion with the auxiliary did) An inverted subject pronoun may sometimes develop into a verb ending, as described in the previous section with regard to Venetian. Another common way of marking questions is with the use of a grammatical particle or an enclitic, to turn a statement into a yes–no question enquiring whether that statement is true. A particle may be placed at the beginning or end of the sentence, or attached to an element within the sentence. Examples of interrogative particles typically placed at the start of the sentence include the French est-ce que and Polish czy. (The English word whether behaves in this way too, but is used in indirect questions only.) The constructed language Esperanto uses the particle ĉu, which operates like the Polish czy:

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Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Interrogative

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Interrogative claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Interrogative before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Interrogative ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Interrogative

In research: Interrogative appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Interrogative in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Interrogative is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Generative syntax, Grammatical moods, Interrogative words and phrases, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Interrogative outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Interrogative in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Interrogative means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Interrogative out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Interrogative in simple terms?

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".

Why does Interrogative matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Interrogative?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Interrogative.