Most assertions can be turned into exclamations by changing the intonation of the sentence. However, there are exclamation structures obtained from statements containing s subject complement or certain adverbials of manner or time. If there is a noun phrase as subject complement (N-sc), then the exclamation begins with What:

If the subject complement consists of an adjectival, then the exclamation begins with How:

The main difference is between yes/no questions or ‘polar (i. e. positive vs. negative) questions' and wh-questions. The former are based on the truth value of the corresponding statement, in the sense that

require the interlocutor to decide whether:

are true or false. In any case, this only applies to ‘real' questions, where the communicative goal is getting information. It does not apply to most of those interrogative forms that express requests and/or contain modals:

In these cases, the appropriate response is, respectively, lighting the cigarette, opening the window and refraining from smoking: a non-verbal response instead of an answer. Verbal answers (like "Yes, I have" to no. 27) not followed by the appropriate action would be contradictory and would be interpreted as being impolite or ironical — depending on the intonation and the context. Negative answers usually begin with "Sorry, but…", unless one is being impolite, for any reason — irritation, haughtiness, hurry, lack of politeness....

As is well known, wh-questions are called so because all interrogative pronouns and adverbs, except how, begin with wh-. Their function is to obtain a specific answer relating to one of the components of the underlying statement.

Starting from a complex statement, we can derive a yes/no question and as many wh- questions as the pieces of information it contains. For example, starting from

we get the yes/no question:

and the following wh-questions:

In most interrogative sentences the verb form V is split into two parts, one (an auxiliary, a modal or the dummy operator do/does/did) before the subject S, and the other (the main verb and any auxiliaries except the first) after the subject. In two cases no splitting occurs:

— with simple forms of to be — see example no. 26; in these cases we have inversion of S and V;

— when the wh-word refers to the subject or part of the subject of the underlying statement (cp. nos. 30b and 30c); in these cases the subject pronoun remains before the verb, which keeps the form it has in the statement.

As stated above, the normal (technically: unmarked) function of wh-questions is ‘asking for specific information'. This does not exclude that they, too, are used for various types of communicative goals: for instance

may be pragmatically equivalent to

Indeed, why don't we/you/they... is a fairly frequent way of expressing suggestions or giving advice. Similarly, sentences like

may express wonder, protest, irritation, reproach, requests or offers of help, and so on, depending on the context and co-text.(7)