question

Overview

A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammatical forms typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are interrogative in form but may not be considered bona fide questions, as they are not expected to be answered. Questions come in a number of varieties. Polar questions are those such as the English example "Is this a polar question?", which can be answered with "yes" or "no". Alternative questions such as "Is this a polar question, or an alternative question?" present a list of possibilities to choose from. Open questions such as "What kind of question is this?" allow many possible resolutions. Questions are widely studied in linguistics and philosophy of language. In the subfield of pragmatics, questions are regarded as illocutionary acts which raise an issue to be resolved in discourse. In approaches to formal semantics such as alternative semantics or inquisitive semantics, questions are regarded as the denotations of interrogatives, and are typically identified as sets of the propositions which answer them. Definitions

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Notable quotes

“Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.”
— Aristotle in: Martin C. Dillon Merleau-Ponty Vivant: The History of Albany's Rapp Road Community, SUNY Press, 1991, p. 31
“O my body, make of me always a man who questions!”
— Frantz Fanon, concluding sentence of Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
“Our questions and answers are in part determined by the historical tradition in which we find ourselves.”
— Karl Jaspers, On My Philosophy (1941), as published in Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre (1956) edited by Walter Kaufmann.
“When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche in: William Safire, Leonard Safir Words of Wisdom, Simon and Schuster, 15-Apr-1990, p. 237
“Positive feelings come from being honest about yourself and accepting your personality, and physical characteristics, warts and all; and, from belonging to a family that accepts you without question.”
— Willard Scott in: Willard Scott's The joy of living, Thorndike Press, 1983, p. 19
“If you really limit me to one question, it would be: Why is the world the way it is?”
— Steven Weinberg in: (quote at 15:23 of 15:51; interview by William Banko)

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.