Interrogatives in Esperanto
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In Esperanto there are two kinds of interrogatives: yes-no interrogatives, and correlative interrogatives.
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[edit] Yes-no interrogatives
Yes-no interrogatives are questions which can be answered with yes or no. They are formed in Esperanto by starting the sentence or clause with ĉu. For example, La pomo estas sur la tablo. - The apple is on the table., as opposed to Ĉu la pomo estas sur la tablo? - Is the apple on the table? In spoken Esperanto, a question is normally accompanied by a rising intonation. In some cases, especially when the context makes it clear that the sentence is an interrogatives, a rising intonation alone can make a clause into a question, but this is rare and highly marked. In Esperanto, the subject and the verb are generally not inverted in questions, unlike English and other languages.
[edit] Correlative interrogatives
Esperanto has a series of words which can be arranged in a table according to how they start and end which are often called correlatives. The column of words which begin with ki- can be used to ask questions which cannot be answered by yes or no. These correspond to wh-questions in English. These words are:
- kiu - who or which
- kio - what
- kia - what kind of
- kie - where
- kiam - when
- kies - whose
- kiel - how
- kial - why
- kiom - how much or how many
These words are inflected according to the role they play in the clause (for the words which take an inflection), and moved to the beginning of the clause. For example, Kion vi faras? - What are you doing? As with yes-no questions, there is no inversion of subject and verb, and the sentence is generally ended with a rising intonation in the spoken language.
[edit] Indirect questions
Any interrogative clause as explained above can be used as-is as an indirect question, as the object of a verb like scii, to know.
- Mi ne scias, ĉu la pomo estas sur la tablo. - I don't know whether the apple is on the table.
- Li scias, kion vi faras. - He knows what you are doing.
[edit] Ambiguity
Because the correlatives which begin with ki- are also used to form relative clauses (similarly to many European languages) there is in theory a potential for ambiguity between indirect questions and relative clauses. In practice, however, confusion is very rare.
