Wh-question

Pronunciation

• RP IPA: en, /ˈdÊŒblÌ©juː eɪtʃ ˈkwÉ›st͡ʃən/, /dÊŒblÌ©juː ˈeɪtʃ kwÉ›st͡ʃən/
• GA IPA: en, /dÊŒblÌ©juː ˈeɪtʃ ËŒkwÉ›st͡ʃən/, /dÉ™-/
• Hyphenation: en + wh-quest + ion

Origin

From the fact that many of the s and s that are used at the beginning of such sentences, such as what, when, which, who, and why, begin with wh.

Compare OED Online|entry=wh|pos=n|id=228009|date=1986|nodot=yes; Lexico|pos=n

Full definition of wh-question

Noun

1. (chiefly linguistics) A question that is introduced by a wh-word (what, where, why, etc.) and cannot be answered by yes or no.
• 1968, Roger Brown, w Chapter The Development of Wh Questions in Child Speech, In general each kind of Wh question calls for an answer which is an instance of a particular major sentence constituent.
• 22 July 1970, Sara Regina Murphy, Semantic Interpretation of Deep Structure for Natural-language Computer Input Chapter Relative Clauses and Wh-questions, To answer a wh-question, a person usually examines the items described by the <+WH> noun phrase and tests the truth of the sentence for each item.
• 1980, Petr PiÅ¥ha, Linguistic Studies Offered to Berthe Siertsema Chapter Case Frames of Nouns, On the semantic level we understand as obligatory those modifications about which the speaker has an important information so that he must be able to answer a wh-question formed by the listener in the case that there is an ellipsis of the given member of the sentence on the syntactic level. The necessity to be able to answer a wh-question is thus a criterion distinguishing obligatory and optional modifications.
• 1985, James W. Gair, Studies in South Asian Linguistics: Sinhala and Other South Asian Languages Chapter Focused Sentences: Naturalization of a Calque, Note that one cannot describe such basic processes as yes–no question and WH-question formation, negation, or the use of emphatic particles in Sinhala without involving focusing, ...
• 1988, James David McCawley, The Syntactic Phenomena of English Chapter Interrogative Clauses, In the preceding chapters, I have tentatively adopted an analysis for yes-no and WH-questions (aside from multiple WH-questions, as in (1b′), which have not been taken up yet) on the following lines: ... The S of that structure has the same form as the deep structure of a corresponding declarative sentence, except that the structure underlying a WH-question such as (1b) has a WH-expression in place of one of the constituents that could occur in a corresponding declarative; ...
• 2015, Larissa Pöltl, Teaching Speaking. Wh-questions (Englisch 6. Klasse Gymnasium): Lesson Plan Chapter Task Cycle, The language focus of our lesson were the wh-questions. To form them, a wh-question word needs to move to the clause-initial position: What will you buy? This is also the case in German: Was wirst du kaufen?
• 2015, Lidia Tanaka, Japanese Questions: Discourse, Context and Language Chapter Nourishing the Friendship: Questions in Friends’ Talk, One of the aspects particular to friend talk in Japanese is that the speech is in informal style, and while as in any other interactions there are style shifts, these are very limited and strategically accomplished. In informal style questions the ka question particle is omitted and interrogativity is mainly accomplished through intonation and Wh-question words.

Alternative forms

• wh question, {{3}}
• wh- question, {{3}}
• WH-question, {{3}}, WH question, {{3}}

Related terms

• wh-word

Further reading

• Cambridge|wh- question
• Collins|WH question