The structure of the interrogative sentence in European languages

Doklady Bashkirskogo Universiteta. 2024. Volume 9. No. 3. pp. 85-100.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33184/dokbsu-2024.3.11

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The article is devoted to the structure of interrogative sentences in a number of European languages (Russian, Polish, English, German, French, Spanish, Bashkir and Turkish), which goes a long way to building a theory of language in general and, in particular, a comprehensive typology of the sentence. The aim of the study is to establish common and distinctive features (components) which determine the structure of general and special questions in the languages of contrast. Such components include, for example, inversion of the basic word order, an interrogative particle, an auxiliary verb, and position of the interrogative word. Variation of such components of question structure makes it possible to establish models predominantly employed by the contrasted tongues, while one and the same language may employ various models. An ideal model of a “quiet” sentence structure suggesting full absence of question building components stands for a language etalon, while the languages of contrast representing the etalon may include such components either on a compulsory or a selective basis which brings some “tension” to the syntactic structure. The hypothesis of the study related to interdependence between word autonomy and the degree of syntactic structure tension is verified on the basis of optional sampling of equivalent interrogative sentences in the contrasted tongues. According to the increment of syntactic tension the contrasted languages can be disposed in the following order: (Russian, Polish) → (Bashkir, Turkish) → (German, Spanish) → (French) → (English).