Question

A question is a linguistic expression used to make a request for information, or the request made using such an expression. The information requested should be provided in the form of an answer.

Questions have developed a range of uses that go beyond the simple eliciting of information from another party. Rhetorical questions, for example, are used to make a point, and are not expected to be answered. Many languages have special grammatical forms for questions (for example, in the English sentence "Are you happy?", the inversion of the subject you and the verb are shows it to be a question rather than a statement). However questions can also be asked without using these interrogative grammatical structures – for example one may use an imperative, as in "Tell me your name".

Uses

The principal use of questions is to elicit information from the person being addressed, by indicating, more or less precisely, the information which the speaker (or writer) desires. However questions can also be used for a number of other purposes. Questions may be asked for the purpose of testing someone's knowledge, as in a quiz or examination. Raising a question may guide the questioner along an avenue of research (see Socratic method).