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An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as what, which, when, where, who, whom, whose, why, whether and how. They are sometimes called wh-words , because in English most of them start with wh- (compare Five Ws ).
Verbs often undergo tense changes in indirect speech. This commonly occurs in content clauses (typically that-clauses and indirect questions), when governed by a predicate of saying (thinking, knowing, etc.) which is in the past tense or conditional mood. In this situation the following tense and aspect changes occur relative to the original words:
German indirect speech consists formally of dependent clauses depending on a verb of saying, holding, thinking or the like, but they may sometimes be elliptically left out and simply implied. Questions take their question-word, yes-no-questions take ob ("whether"), and statements take dass for the conjunction.
Reported questions (as in the last of the examples) are also subject to the tense and other changes that apply generally in indirect speech. For more information see interrogative mood and English grammar. Indirect questions can serve as adjective and noun complements. Here, in English, they are generally introduced by a preposition, especially of:
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.
The most common use of subject–auxiliary inversion in English is in question formation. It appears in yes–no questions: a. Sam has read the paper. – Statement b. Has Sam read the paper? – Question. and also in questions introduced by other interrogative words (wh-questions): a. Sam is reading the paper. – Statement b. What is Sam reading?
One common way of performing speech acts is to use an expression, which indicates one speech act, and indeed performs this act, but also performs a further speech act, which is indirect. One may, for instance, say, "Peter, can you close the window?", thereby asking Peter whether he will be able to close the window, but also requesting that he ...
English tag questions, when they have the grammatical form of a question, are atypically complex, because they vary according to at least three factors: the choice of auxiliary, the negation and the intonation pattern. This is unique among the Germanic languages, but the Celtic languages operate in a very similar way.