Grice on the interrogative "mode"

---- By J. L. S.

RETRIEVING POSTS from elsewhere to the Club I append here some OED quotes for 'interrogative'. This is NOT formal, for surely we can just do with

x-question,
xy-question (i.e. two variable question: when and where did he do it?
yes/no-question

and using "?" for question and its inverse symbol for "answer".

Grice was pedantic enough (I love him!) to follow Moravscik in preferring "mode" to "mood" -- he was not in the mood to use mood any more.

The 'interrogative' is not really a mode -- it seems to be a variant of the imperative mode. Oddly, for grammarians, it's more of a variant of the 'indicative' mode:

Is he dead?

would be in the indicative mode of 'be': 'is'.

(Cfr. Grice on 'indicative' vis a vis Moore's paradox in WoW:iii)

But I would take ? as a variant of ! in that a question is like what Hare calls a neustic.

the door is closed. yes.

the door is closed, please. --- I.e. Close the door!

the door is closed. Answer Is the door closed?


--- i.e. the sign "?" signals "I want you to provide a claim that fulfils the gap in my mind," or something.

---

From the OED.

Interrogative -- from the Latin "interrogativus", from interrogate v. and -ive. No
collocation with "mood" except, of course, in Dummett and Grice!

Quotes in Eng. Lang.:

1711 J. Greenwood

"The substantive comes before

the verb except in

an Interrogative sentence."



"Is he dead?"



1532 Du Wes Introd. Fr. in Palsgr. 994

"The conjugation interrogative, as, Am I? suis je?"



1845 Stoddart

The..interrogative form of the verb.

----

My favourite use of the interrogative mode has to be from Dickens:

"Sk. Boz iv,

He is a tall, thin, bony man, with an interrogative nose".

Etc.

JLS