Constituent interrogatives transmit content or information questions about other

thing,persons,objects,location,times and reasons.

-They are different from polar interrogatives in the structure and semantically. Their common denominator
is located in the expression of directive question force.
Their main function is the information-seeking and this is associated with the use of constituent
interrogatives,for example:
When did the British establish Singapore as a colony? In 1867
Constituent interrogative are created with the use of interrogative word,usually referred to wh-
word ,especially in English context. They indicate the missing information ,its syntagmatic position and
function in argument of the clause. For example,the interrogative “ wh-word what” refers to the object
argument of the clause
What did the students read? The students read a thriller
Wh-word when substitues a temporal adverb
When did the students arrived? The students arrived late
We can show the meaning of interrogative words in terms of variable,indicated by x and y,these variables
stand for the missing information.
The students read x
The students arrived y
As shown,interrogative words are used to signal the type of information queried and they replace the
constituent that encodes the information sought and in English they are situated in clause-initial position.
Constituent interrogative contain an illocutionary force operator marking them as questions:
Krifka introduces the illocutionary operator QUEST to achieve this,because the function of constituent
interrogatives is typically described as a request to the addresse to supply the information missing in the
open proposition described by them. They are used in situation in which the speaker doesn’t know
necessary information to complete the open proposition and in asking them,the speaker tries to reach the
missing information from the addressee.
(ANNA)
The aim of the constituent interrogative can be also different from the seeking information,as shown in the
example:
a. Well, what damn fool would trust a bank with their money? (statement)
b. Why don’t we get a coffee? (suggestion)
c. Who do you think you are? (reprimand)
constituent interrogatives contain an illocutionary force operator marking them as questions, the examples
in need to be analysed as non-central, contextually derived uses. They are indirect speech acts, in contrast
to the direct, information-seeking act.
Relying on Searle’s taxonomy of speech acts (‘representatives’, ‘directives’, ‘commissives’, ‘expressives’, and
‘declarations’), we can see that example (a) belongs to the class of representatives (a so-called ‘rhetorical
question’), (b) to that of directives, while (c) illustrates expressive
The form and function of constituent interrogatives in English
English constituent interrogatives require subject-auxiliary inversion and do-support,as long ad there is no
other auxiliary verb in the clause,and place interrogative words in clause-initial position but they don’t
activate the inversion of subject and auxiliary.
Alessia

ANNA
As shown in this example:

Who did you meet?

Who met you?
What have you eaten?
Who is your best friend?
English constituent interrogatives require subject–auxiliary inversion and do-support, as long as there is no
other auxiliary verb in the clause, and place interrogative words in clause-initial position, they activate the
inversion of the subject and auxiliary.
As it is shown in the example :
a. Who did you meet? / Who met you?
b. What have you eaten?
c. Who is your best friend?
Interrogative clauses can appear as main clauses, or as embedded (subor- dinate) clauses.
The embedded clauses to the cases in do not require subject–auxiliary inversion and do-support, but show
the unmarked word order of declarative clauses. Embedded constituent interrogatives are nevertheless
introduced by an interrogative word in clause-initial position.
A. I’m wondering who you met.
b. I would like to know what you have eaten.
c. I don’t know who your best friend is.
A great part of constituent interrogatives are made up by interrogative word (wh-word):
wh-word meaning