A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

162 Chapter 9 Clause type: asking, exclaiming, and directing

is Sue? has an open-ended set of answers. The terms are then applied derivatively to
interrogatives: closed interrogatives and open interrogatives are clause types
characteristically used to ask closed and open questions respectively.
Note that we distinguish between an answer to a question and a response to it. A
response is whatever someone says as a result of being asked some question. I might
ask: Is Sue here ?, and you might say I'm not sure. That would be a response, but not
an answer. It was a closed question, and it has only two answers: Ye s or No.
(Lawyers often have to remind witnesses about this.) If I ask: Where is Sue?, I've
asked an open question whose answer will give the location of Sue, but again, if you
said: Why do you ask?, that would be a response, not an answer to my question.

2.1 The form of closed interrogatives

Closed interrogative form is marked by subject-auxiliary inversion: the

subject occurs after the auxiliary verb, as in the [b] members of the pairs in [6].

[6] DECLARATIVE CLOSED INTERROGATIVE

a. It is raining. b. Is it raining?

11 a. He can 't swim. b. Can 't he swim?

111 a. The doctor recommended it. b. Did the doctor recommend it?

In [i-ii] the closed interrogative differs from its declarative counterpart by having

subject and auxiliary verb in the reverse order.

If, as in [iiia], the declarative does not contain an auxiliary, the dummy auxiliary

do appears in the interrogative, as described in Ch. 3, §3.1.

Closed interrogatives vs other subject-auxiliary inversion clauses

Inversion is not restricted to closed interrogatives, but elsewhere it normally
occurs only when certain kinds of element occupy initial position in the clause, as
in [7]:

[7] i Never had I seen her so fu rious.

ii Jill approved of it and [so did her husband]. }

iii Why are you looking at me like that?

[declarative]

[open interrogative]

In [i] and [ii], belonging to the default declarative category, the inversion is trig­

gered by the occurrence in initial position of a negative element (never) and a

connective (so).

In [iii] the inversion is triggered by the initial interrogative element why, a

marker of the open interrogative type.

Rising intonation as a marker of questions

A closed question can be signalled by means of a rise in the intonation (represented
by '/") instead of by a different syntactic form:

[8] i Yo u're sure you can affo rd it? /'
ii So they offe red her $50 but she refused? /'