Feature GB324: Is there an interrogative verb for content interrogatives (who?, what?, etc.)?

Patrons: Hannah J. Haynie

Description ⇫

Summary

Interrogative verbs are verbs that include a semantic wh-element. In other words, the semantic content of interrogative verb roots includes an element equivalent to a content question, with meanings such as, ‘to do what’ or ‘to be who’. The wh-element must behave like a verb in the language. In English, for example, it would require regular verbal morphology, as in, You what-ed yesterday? (meaning, ‘what did you do yesterday?’). The feature does not include verbs of asking (e.g. English ask, inquire) or interrogative forms created through affixation of interrogative markers to non-interrogative verb roots.

Procedure

  1. Find all sections of the grammar that describe content (wh-) questions and interrogative clauses.
  2. If the source describes verb roots with clear interrogative (wh-) meanings, code 1
  3. If the source describes content interrogative constructions in some detail, but interrogative verbs are not mentioned, code 0
  4. If the source does not describe content interrogative constructions in much detail, code ? and provide a comment regarding the insufficient evidence.

Examples

Tiri-Mea (ISO 639-3: cir, Glottolog: tiri1258)

Tiri-Mea has the following verb roots for content interrogatives (Osumi 1995: 229):

  • trò ‘what is the matter with’ is a verb asking about the subject’s problematic situation;
  • hwasââwe ‘how to know, on what evidence’ is either a verb or a posthead modifier, asking about the evidentiality of information supplied by the addressee.

The first of these interrogatives is given in the following example :

nrâ   trò      â    rroto
3SG   matter   SBJ  car
‘What is the matter with the car?’ (Osumi 1995: 229)

This language also uses several non-verbal content interrogatives: ne ‘what’, anròi ‘how many’, jaa ‘who’, anr ‘what time’, (â)e ‘where’, unròi ‘how many times’.

Even though there are only two verbal content interrogatives and the more common and more general interrogatives are not verbs, the existence of any interrogative verbs for content interrogatives triggers a 1.

Arapaho (ISO 639-3: arp, Glottolog: arap1274)

Arapaho is a polysynthetic language with highly complex verb forms. The content question (wh-) forms in the language typically occur as prefixes or proclitics in verbal forms (Cowell & Moss 2008: 241). This is shown in the following examples:

a. heitousíneyéi3éí?
e-ii-tousi-neyei3ei
2SG-IPFV-what-go.to.school
‘What are you learning/doing at school?’ (Cowell & Moss 2008: 242)

b. heitou3ééneyéi3éí?
e-ii-tou3ee-neyei3ei
2SG-IPFV-why-go.to.school
‘Why are you going to school?’ (Cowell & Moss 2008: 243)

c. héétou’úneyéi3éí?
e-eti-tou’u-neyei3ei
2SG-FUT-when-go.to.school
‘When will you go to school?’ (Cowell & Moss 2008: 243)

d. tootéíneyéi3éí?
toot=e-ii-neyei3ei
where=2SG-IPFV-go.to.school
‘Where do you go to school?’ (Cowell & Moss 2008: 243)

The occurrence of wh-morphemes in Arapaho preverbs, as shown above, is not sufficient to trigger a 1, as these examples involve non-interrogative verb roots. The wh-forms in Arapaho can also be used as verb initials with lexical verb finals to create complex verb stems, as shown below:

e. heihtou3éetoo?
e-ih-tou3ee-too
2SG-PST-why-do(ANIM.TR)
‘Why did you do that?’ (Cowell & Moss 2008: 245)

Again, the occurrence of wh-forms in the verbal domain in the example above is not sufficient to trigger a 1, as these forms require non-interrogative verb roots. Content interrogative forms in Arapaho can also combine with abstract verb finals to create existential constructions with wh- meanings.

e. tohuu-tox
‘how many’ (Cowell & Moss 2008: 244)

f. tohúutóxuno
‘How many are there?’ (Cowell & Moss 2008: 244)

Again, the creation of existential clauses through the combination of interrogative morphemes with non-interrogative forms is not sufficient to trigger a 1, as it involves a non-interrogative verb final and it is unclear to what extent the wh-forms in these existential clauses behave specifically like verbs. The morphosyntactic properties of languages like Arapaho can make this feature difficult to code, but Arapaho is coded 0.

Further reading

Hagège, Claude. (2008). Towards a typology of interrogative verbs. Linguistic Typology, 12(1), 1-44.

Idiatov, Dmitry. 2007. A typology of non-selective interrogative pronominals. Antwerp: University of Antwerp. (Doctoral dissertation.)

References

Cowell, Andrew & Alonzo Moss Sr. 2008. The Arapaho language. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Osumi, Midori. 1995. Tinrin grammar. (Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication, 25.) Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.


To display the datapoints for a particular language family on the map and on the classification tree, select the family then click "submit".

You may combine this variable with a different variable by selecting on in the list below and clicking "Submit".

Customize map markers:
0 absent 1622
1 present 209
? Not known 300
reload

Map ⇫


Values ⇫

Name Glottocode Family Macroarea Contributor Value Source Comment