8

Suppose I have the sentence:

"All apples are green."

Although it is not a true statement, clearly it is a declarative sentence. Can any declarative sentence like this be made into an interrogative sentence (a question) merely by replacing the period with a question mark?

The reason I ask is because the typical word order for such a question would be:

"Are all apples green?"

Notice that the verb has been moved to the beginning of the sentence. This is the way most of us would word the sentence when phrasing it as a question.

James Waldby - jwpat7
  • 66,660
George Edison
  • 639
  • 3
  • 10
  • 20

2 Answers2

13

Appending a question mark to a declarative sentence results in a valid sentence?

Yes.

Edit

(This is just to elaborate and provide some examples. I stand by the assertion above. Here's why.)

sentence [ˈsɛntəns]
n
1. (Linguistics) a sequence of words capable of standing alone to make an assertion, ask a question, or give a command, usually consisting of a subject and a predicate containing a finite verb
[Collins English Dictionary, unabridged]

A valid sentence, then, need only fulfill one of the requirements listed above. Although we tend to think of sentences the way we were taught to in grammar school (i.e., involving at least a subject and a predicate, blah blah) a sentence doesn't have to be defined so narrowly. The following are all valid sentences:

Joe: Going to the mall?
Tom: Yes.
Joe: Really?
Tom: No, not really. Just messing with you.
Joe: Oh. You bastard.
Tom: I'm being a bastard?
Joe: Well, if the shoe fits ...
Tom: The shoe fits?
Joe: It doesn't?
Tom: Well, maybe.
Joe: Maybe?
Tom: All right.
Joe: So. The shoe fits?
Tom: Yeah.

Notice that peppered in the dialogue are declarative sentences expressed as questions. Sometimes they are used to cast doubt on the assertion, but in Joe's final line it is used as a request for affirmation.

Robusto
  • 151,571
  • 1
    Sometimes? (Now padding my comment to 15 character minimum.) – Gnawme Jan 25 '12 at 22:58
  • @Gnawme: Go on, I'll bite. Can you come up with a declarative sentence that can't be converted to a question by appending a question mark? My instinct is to feel this is a universally true rule - a declarative statement asserts something, and adding the question mark casts doubt on the truth of the assertion. Always? – FumbleFingers Jan 25 '12 at 23:22
  • 1
    @FumbleFingers I tried it with every sentence of Jabberwocky ('Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe?) It's valid (per the OP's question), but is it truly interrogative? Then again, teenage girls are notorious for turning all declaratives into interrogatives, so my quest may be doomed. – Gnawme Jan 25 '12 at 23:37
  • 2
    @Gnawme: There's inherent ambiguity if you "questionise" Jabberwocky like that! On the one hand, someone might be contesting the assertion that it really did happen that way (maybe it was actually much later in the day than brillig, maybe it wasn't even toves at all, etc.) On the other hand, the question mark might simply stand for "wtf does all this mean?" – FumbleFingers Jan 25 '12 at 23:49
  • 1
    My feeling is that changing the punctuation without also changing the word order might result in a "valid" sentence (for some definition of "valid"), but it very rarely results in a valid question. A declarative sentence with a question mark at the end is merely a statement that you're not sure about. – Marthaª Jan 26 '12 at 15:27
  • 1
    @Marthaª: You're sure about that? – Robusto Jan 26 '12 at 15:57
6

No. The sentence would not (normally) be properly constructed to be a question. You must alter the word order and typically add some sort of interrogative word like "what" or "who".

It is fairly common in English to add a question mark to a declarative statement to express doubt as to its accuracy. Like:

Bob: All Ruritanians are lazy.
Al: Really? All Ruritanians are lazy?

I'd say this is grammatically incorrect but may be rhetorically effective.

Hugo
  • 67,535
Jay
  • 36,223
  • 9
    I'm not sure what it means to say that something is grammatically incorrect when it's something native speakers do say and it seems perfectly natural in spoken or written form. Is there some accepted rule it violates? – David Schwartz Jan 26 '12 at 07:48
  • 1
    Surely there are many things that native speakers routinely say that are grammatically incorrect. For example, sentence fragments. Like if I said, "For example, sentence fragments". You know what I mean, but it is not a complete sentence because it has no verb. In this case, it violates the rule of using a question mark to end a sentence that is not a question. Punctuation must be consistent with the words in a sentence. "This, is! -- a grammatically: in?correct sentence;." – Jay Jan 26 '12 at 16:31
  • 4
    Sentence fragments are not grammatically incorrect. They're just not correct sentences. There is no rule that one must speak in sentences. As for it violating the rule of using a question mark to end a sentence that is not a question, it is a question. I agree that if it was not a question, it would be incorrect. "All Ruritanians are lazy" is a question in this context. It has an implied "Do you really claim" or "Do you expect me to believe" at the beginning of it, just as if those words appeared there. – David Schwartz Jan 26 '12 at 21:43
  • 2
    @DavidSchwartz: There is no law that one must write in complete sentences in the sense that you will be jailed for not doing so. There is no rule that you must write grammatically correct sentences even in the sense that you will not be understood if you do not. But "the sentence was more effective when I ignored the rules" is not the same as "the sentence conformed to the rules". It is certainly not the same as "there are no rules". To say, "it would be right if you added these words" implies that it is not right without those words. – Jay Jan 26 '12 at 22:17
  • 4
    @Jay, can you find any documentation that there is such a rule? If not, it seems that your answer is unsupportable. After all, grammar is a description of how native speakers speak and write. Since native speakers clearly both say and write such questions, it seems dubious to label them as ungrammatical. –  Feb 22 '12 at 07:50
  • 2
    I would like to point out how in your very own example, "All Ruritanians are lazy?" cannot be simply replaced by "Are all Ruritanians lazy?" That wouldn't be asking the same thing. So it's not a matter of grammaticality, it's a matter of meaning. These are two different questions, both of them grammatical. – RegDwigнt Feb 22 '12 at 10:46
  • 1
    @Wallace et al: I guess we could debate definitions here. If you define "grammatically correct" as "anything that conveys meaning" or "anything commonly said by native speakes" or "anything that any native speaker has ever said", then there are no such things as "grammar rules", and to ask "Is this a grammatically correct sentence?" is a meaningless question, as you've just defined anything that anyone says as a grammatically correct sentence. I can say "Wha? Ugh" and convey meaning, and people do all the time. – Jay Feb 22 '12 at 15:30
  • @RedDwight I've never said that taking a grammatically incorrect sentence and modifying it in some way to produce a sentence that is grammatically correct inevitably results in a sentence that conveys the intended meaning. That would be absurd. Like, "I no dog." Does the writer mean "I am not a dog"? "I don't have a dog"? "I know a dog"? All are grammatically correct and resemble the original sentence, but of course have very different meanings. In this case, a grammatically correct version that expresses the presumed idea might be, "Do you really believe that all Ruritanians are lazy?" – Jay Feb 22 '12 at 15:44
  • 1
    The "rules" are extracted from the language, not the other way around. They're not really 'rules', but common patterns. The patterns are shared among many language users, and so breaking really common ones can cause confusion. But like all patterns in nature, there are many exceptions to the rules, and rules within rules. Anyway, one particularly clear pattern among native speakers is that in some cases, you can drop a large part of the sentence, and leave it implicit. "(are) You coming?", "(is that) Really (true)?". Why is that not also grammatically correct? – naught101 Jul 14 '13 at 22:11
  • 1
    Well, we've had this conversation on this site many times before. (By "we" I don't mean "you and me" but "people who use this site".) Is "correct grammar" a description of what speakers of the language say? Is it what some self-proclaimed expert wrote in a book? Or what? If it's "what do people say", then it is meaningless to say that a sentence is "not correct grammar", because by definition if someone said it, it is correct grammar. Which would make sites like this superfluous. Perhaps you could define it as "what people COMMONLY say", but then you'd be arguing statistics. ... – Jay Sep 21 '21 at 16:51
  • 1
    ... Personally, I think we should respect rules that make sense and that make language easier to understand. Like "nouns and verbs should agree in number" makes sense because it helps the reader to grasp the number and it often helps to identify the subject as opposed to other nouns in the sentence. Rules like "never use a preposition to end a sentence with" and "be sure to not split an infinitive" don't provide any value and just make it more difficult to compose a sentence. But I freely admit that that's an opinion. There's no scientific experiment I could do to prove it true or false. – Jay Sep 21 '21 at 16:54