Question

A question is a sentence, utterance, or inquiry that requests information, clarification, or confirmation from a listener or reader. Its primary function is to elicit an answer or to invite further discussion. In everyday speech, questions are often indicated by intonation, punctuation, or syntactic form, and they may carry different degrees of assertiveness or politeness.

Common types include yes-no questions, which ask if something is true (Do you like coffee?); wh-questions, which begin with who, what, where, when, why, or how (Where did you go?); and alternative questions that offer options (Is it red or blue?). Rhetorical questions do not seek an answer as such. In many languages, question formation involves syntactic changes such as inversion or add-ons like question particles and tag questions.

In logic and epistemology, questions are analyzed in terms of the information they aim to obtain, the conditions of answerability, and the criteria for truth or justification.

The word 'question' derives from Latin quaestio, from quaerere 'to seek'. In many languages, question words correspond to interrogatives; intonation often signals a question in spoken form.

Related topics include interrogatives, inquiry, and questionnaires.