Quizzical Questions: Part 1

Questions are something that every language handles a bit differently. Let's handle the two types of questions, wh- questions and yes-no questions, one at a time.

Yes-no questions are the simplest, with a response of 'yes' or 'no'. In some languages, you can respond by repeating the verb for yes and/or saying "I don't" for no. For example, Finnish does this but still has words for yes and no. Okay, how do you form these questions? One way to mark a yes no question is inversion. Swapping the order of the subject and the verb tells you that a question is being asked. One example is English! I am wearing glasses. Are you wearing glasses? This inversion is rare in OV languages but not in VO languages. Also note that the main verb, am, is being inverted, not the auxiliary verb wearing.

Another way to go about yes-no questions is a question particle. These are more common in OV languages but appear in natural OV and VO languages. This could be a clitic/affix like the -ko clitic attaching to the verb in Finnish or a separate word such as Arabic 'hal'. French seems at first to do this, adding a word to the beginning of a sentence, but if you dissect that word it essentially means (or used to mean) "Is it true that." This is very common for many languages, and is called a cleft. Also, French does Subject-Verb inversion too, a nice reminder that these techniques are not mutually exclusive.

A negative particle can also be used here. It's like asking, "He's handsome, isn't he?" or "He's handsome, no?" Some languages (eg. Mandarin Chinese) use his as their primary way of creating yes-no questions. This can extend past if an action was taken too: "We go boating good no good?" could mean "Should we go boating?"

In Spanish, your intonation changes to raise pitch at the end of the question, and that's it. English does that too, but not as it's primary way. Another common one in natural languages and a good one to consider.

Lastly, as a secondary yes-no question forming strategy, you can stress one word in a sentence.

  • I fed Spot today?
  • I fed Spot today?
  • I fed Spot today?
  • I fed Spot today?

Almost all languages do this, so have a really good reason to take it out of your conlang if you don't remove it.

Pablang will have this stress yes/no question as well as a word at the beginning of a sentence, derived from "Is it true that" just like French. There will be words for yes and no but you can also conjugate "does not" to answer in the negative. Pitch is also raised at the ends of questions. There we are, yes-no questions done!

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