Questions : Logic and Interactions

The early years of the twenty first century have seen an increased interest in Questions. This is partly due to the rise of interest in interaction, where questions play a key role. As components of context, they are significant actors in grammatical phenomena such as ellipsis and focus. They are of fundamental importance in explicating inquiry and of course in question answering. This update to Jeroen Groenendijk and Martin Stokhof’s 1997 article focuses on the two main areas of logico-linguistic research on questions recently: first, the logic and ontology of questions—what are questions and how do they relate to other semantic entities? Second, questions in interaction— issues such as how questions affect context, why questions get asked, what range of responses—not just answers—do questions give rise to. The boundaries between these two areas is somewhat artificial and, therefore, not easy to demarcate, particularly in an era where meanings are often explicated in terms of context change. A brief indication of other research in the area is provided before the concluding remarks.