Tour Page 3 - Questions and Answers
What's the difference between a question and a statement? It's not just the question
mark at the end! Often you will read that it is the verb phrase that changes by
putting any auxiliary at the start of the sentence ahead of the subject that gives
it away. Of course that's another way of saying the word order in a clause differs
when it is a question - the pattern differs.
There are different kinds of questions. A Y/N question is just a statement once
the word order is converted back. So the truthful answer to a Y/N question is simply
the truth of the statement as seen in the example.
Do you care?
In this example screen, you can see that the program signals that the clause is
a yes/no question - the statement "you do care".
(please click for a larger image)
Of course a language has more ways to interrogate than just simple yes/no questions.
An easy way to prompt for information is to seek the completion to a statement in
which the subject or object is replaced with a known word from the question. It
is acceptable just to provide the missing information, but repeating the entire
question is also acceptable.
Which idiot is the king?
In this screen, you can see that the clause is missing "which idiot" on the right.
The answer needs to also be the king.
(please click for a larger image)
Another kind of question requires the answer to complete the statement from the
question. Converting the word order pattern again results in a statement, but in
which a part of it represents the missing information which can be "fastest". The
truthful answer to this type of question requires the statement's missing information
to be completed.
Which model is the fastest?
In this example screen, you can see that the program shows that the clause requires
an answer to "which model". Valid answers include "the new model", "the new one"
or the restatement of the question "the red one is the fastest".
(please click for a larger image)