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## Expanding Searle's analysis of inter  rogative speech acts: A systematic classification based on preparatory conditions

Niels Møller Nielsen Roskilde University E-mail: nmn@ruc.dk

Abstract: In  John  Searle's  original  taxonomy  of  types  of  illocutionary  acts (Searle 1969) he points out that some kinds of illocutionary acts are special cases  of  other  kinds,  giving  the  example  that  questions  are  in  fact  special cases  of  requests.  In  that  way,  a  'real  question'  is  a  request  for  information that  the  sender  does  not  already  possess,  whereas  an  'exam  question'  is  a request for information that the sender has already access to. Th is paper takes this  rudimentary  analysis  some  steps  further  and  attempts  a  taxonomy  of interrogative speech acts based on sets of more specifi  c preparatory conditions such as sender expects / does not expect reply and sender has access to / does not have access to the requested information . Th e paper will show that a system of these sets of preparatory conditions can generate illocutionary defi  nitions of a range of diff  erent types of interrogative speech acts.

Keywords: Interrogative speech acts, Illocutionary acts, Speech acts, Taxonomy, Preparatory conditions

## 1. Introduction

Any analytical attempt at categorizing questions is bound to challenge its own methodical boundaries at some point or other, since the category of questions, regardless of  what  terminological  and  methodical approaches are chosen, seems to be notoriously transcendent. Questions can hardly be reduced to a certain feature of syntax, a form of conversational activity, or a particular sort of act. Acknowledging the considerable problems of constraining the category, this article explores a particular type of speech act analysis, proposing a specifi  c set of preparatory conditions  (following Searle's classifi  cation (Searle 1969)) as a framework for distinguishing between diff  erent distinct types of interrogative speech acts. Th e approach is quite narrow, and hence limited in its scope, but at the same time some real-life tokens are provided that appear to exemplify the  illocutions  in  question  whenever  these  illocutions  and  their  contextual conditions are not self-evident. Such brief detours involve observations from conversation analysis, argumentation analysis, and functional grammar.

Th e  article  is  based  on,  and  takes  as  its  theoretical  starting  point,  a proposition based approach to speech acts following Searle's original theoretical framework. While it is recognized that a proposition based approach to speech acts is  by  no  means uncontested - in the current issue this is most lucidly demonstrated in Borchmann 2020 - for now I regard that discussion as being beyond the scope of this presentation. Th e aim here is merely to explore how a system based on Searlean-style preparatory conditions can account for various distinct types of interrogative speech acts.

## 2. Expanding Searle's original distinctions

In  speech  act  classifi  cations  such  as  Searle's  (Searle  1969)  it  is  common  to classify types of acts on a general level, so that e.g. representatives, directives, etc. each include a number of more specifi  c speech acts. Th ese more specifi  c act types are more useful for purposes of analyzing empirical language than the general categories they represent, yet the various specifi  c speech acts are not  described  in  much  detail.  Certainly,  Searle's  account  of  questions  was only exemplary (see also Borchmann's discussion of this in the current issue (Borchmann  2020:  section  3)).  He  discusses  two  diff  erent  question  types (both specifi  c  subtypes  of  the  directive  class)  which  diff  er  from  each  other by virtue of whether or not the sender, as a preparatory condition, has initial access to the information that realises the speech act's propositional content (Searle 1969: 69). But following that analysis, there appears to be at least two more types of question. When considering an additional parameter, namely whether  or  not  the  sender  in  fact  expects  a  reply  from  the  recipient,  four diff  erent types of question present themselves, systematically separated by two sets of preparatory conditions: sender has access to the requested information (yes / no) and sender expects reply (yes / no) .

Th ese two sets of preparatory conditions are represented in table 1.

Table 1. Simple combination of two sets of preparatory conditions for clarifi  cation questions  (default  in  an  unmarked  context),  control  questions  (e.g.  at  exams), rhetorical questions (mainly in argumentative contexts), and therapeutical questions (e.g. supervision, councelling, therapy sessions).

|               | Sender has access to requested information   | Sender expects reply   |
|---------------|----------------------------------------------|------------------------|
| Clarification | No                                           | Yes                    |
| Control       | Yes                                          | Yes                    |
| Rhetorical    | Yes                                          | No                     |
| Therapeutic   | No                                           | No                     |

An initial note is due on what the term 'reply' should be taken to mean in this context. Clearly, in any exchange of speech acts, there will be a general preparatory condition that the sender expects a response that is appropriate to the goal or direction of the talk exchange. Taken in that sense, where 'reply' means 'any contextually appropriate response' ,  the  category  'sender  expects reply' would seem to invariantly be 'yes' . Th is expectation is fundamental to the mechanism of conversational implicature, where an obvious disregard of the expected or preferred response initialises an inferential process for generating alternative meaning potential (Grice 1975), as illustrated in example (1).

(1)

- (1.1) A: Did you notice how poorly dressed she is?
- (1.2) B: It is a lovely party isn't it?

B's  apparent fl  outing of A 's expectation for an appropriate response will set the implicatural process in motion. In that theoretical context, most speech acts can be expected to warrant a reply in the general sense of adhering to the direction of the communicative exchange.

In  this  study  the  term  'reply'  is  used  in  a  narrower  sense  that  pertains specifi  cally to interrogative speech acts. In the unmarked case of interrogative speech  act,  i.e.  the  clarifi  cation  question,  the  unmarked  reply  is  one  that commits to the  information  being  requested,  that  is  a  positive  or  negative answer, or an indication of ignorance or of non-committal. A reply in this sense is a reaction in which an epistemological stance is taken on the information which realises the propositional content of the speech act in question. In that sense, B's answer in (1.2), while being a response, does not constitute a reply. As we will address in the following, the types of speech acts in which a reply in this sense is not expected are also the types that are furthest removed from the clarifi  cation question, being essentially indirect types of speech acts.

On  another  terminological  note,  the  term  'to  have  access  to'  is  used pertaining  to  the  information  realised  by  the  interrogative  speech  acts' propositional content. Th e term avoids a variety of ambiguities connected to the otherwise more common expression 'to know' . In the current context, the expression 'to have access to' is used to designate any ability to cognitively process the information in question, be that epistemological or normative, rational og irrational.

Table 1 lays out the initial, simple categorization using the abovementioned categorical distinctions:

Clarifi  cation questions are the default question type, i.e. the interpretation that participants can be expected to employ in an unmarked context: Th ere are no special contextual factors indicating that the sender intends anything other than what is at the heart of the standard interpretation of what a question is: Sender expects an answer, since sender does not have access to the answer.

Control questions, the other type mentioned by Searle, occur in contexts where the situation prescribes that the sender has the special role of assessing or  checking  the  recipient's  knowledge.  Control  questions  are  based  on  the assumption that the sender already knows the answer, but that some kind of need to test the recipient's knowledge requires that he or she gives a reply. It usually occurs in institutionalized contexts such as tests and exams. Control questions are probably also found in certain types of interrogation (see also Mortensen 2020, this issue).

Th e rhetorical question famously does not require a reply since everyone involved (including the sender) knows the answer, and everyone involved is assumed to know that everyone knows the answer. It is used argumentatively / persuasively as a stylistic feature that can accentuate an argumentative context or point.

Finally, there is the therapeutic question, characterized by the condition that sender's interest is not directed at obtaining a reply to the question, nor does sender have access to (or even want to have access to) the information in question. Characteristically, the purpose of the question is to initiate and facilitate  a  process  of  recognition  and  self-refl  ection  within  the  recipient. It  occurs  typically  in  counselling  situations,  in  supervision  settings  and  in therapeutic conversations. Clearly, an actual reply may indeed be given, but the  reply  is  not  strictly  necessary  for  the  exchange  to  commence.  A  mere response that gives some indication that the speech act elicits the desired type of refl  ective process in the receiver, such as a nod or an acknowledgement of the relevance of the question, may suffi ce.

A word of caution with regard to the contexts given here for the diff  erent categories of questions. Th e  approach here is to examplify various types of illocutionary  defi  nitions,  not  to  claim  that  such  speech  act  types  exhaust or entirely cover the dialogical registers of the contexts mentioned. A good example  is  the  therapeutic  question:  it  is  not  the  intention  to  suggest  that this  illocutionary  defi  nition  adequately  describes  therapeutic  practices  and the  dialogical  dynamics  associated  with  them  (see  Brink  and  Jensen  2020 in  the  current  issue  whose  study  of  therapeutic  contexts  adequately  proves this  point).  Th e  approach  here  only  suggests  that  speech  act  types  like  the ones generated by the combinations of preparatory conditions are plausible in  real  life,  and  that  the  mentioned  contexts  are  examples  of  such  real  life environments.

Th e four categories of interrogative speech acts treated this far constitute a fi  rst approximation of a defi  nitory system, using a simple set of preparatory conditions. However, the classifi  cation is far from exhausted using this simple system, since it is not hard to fi  nd examples of questions that do not seem to be covered by it.

## 3. Taking the analysis further

In an introduction to the fi  eld of Conversation Analysis, Hutchby & Wooffi tt treats the example

- (2)
- (2.1) Mother: Do you know who's going to that meeting?

(example treated by Hutchby and Wooffi tt 1988: 15f.)

Th e speech act may indeed apply as a clarifi  cation question in an unmarked context, but on the assumption that the context involves the shared knowledge that  the  sender  is  in  fact  aware  of  the  information  in  question,  it  can  be reinterpreted as a 'pre-announcement' , i.e, a sequential initiation that, given that a following turn expresses a negative reply, leads the sender to proceed with actually providing the information in question.

In conversation analysis, the determination of a token of conversational activity can only be accomplished in sequential context - i. e. the analyst may be able to categorize an act as a pre-announcement question only when the sequence seems to indicate that it has that function, as in (3):

(3)

- (3.1) D: Didju hear the terrible news?

(3.2) R: No, what.

(example treated in Terasaki: 184)

Clearly, it is only the reply by the recipient (R) and the (assumed) subsequent approval of the sender (D) that this reply is indeed the preferred one, that indicates that this is in fact a genuine pre-announcement question. To clarify, once we apply the sequential context to our fi  rst example, it is evident that the function of the activity is subject to sequential negotiation:

(2)

- (2.1) Mother: Do you know who's going to that meeting?

- (2.2) Russ: Who?

- (2.3) Mother: I don't know!

- (2.4) Russ: Oh, probably Mr. Murphy and Dad (…)

(example treated by Hutchby and Wooffi tt 1988: 15f.)

In (2.2) Russ clearly treats Mother's activity in (2.1)  as a pre-announcement question, aft  er which it turns out (in (2.3)) that it was not intended as such aft  er all. Russ then goes on to repair the situation in (2.4), acknowledging that the question was in fact intended to be of the clarifi  cation type.

Pre-announcement  sequences  are  well  known  and  documented  as interaction  devices,  and  their  existence  requires  us  to  introduce  a  new  set of preparatory conditions: namely, sender expects the recipient to have access to  the  requested  information  (yes  /  no) .  Th e  parameter sender  intends  to supply (literally or by implication) the requested information (yes / no) , is also introduced.

Table 2. Expansion with pre-announcement.

|                  | Sender has access to requested information   | Sender expects the recipient to have access to the requested information   | Sender expects reply   | Sender intends to supply (or imply) the requested information   |
|------------------|----------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| Clarification    | No                                           | Yes                                                                        | Yes                    | No                                                              |
| Control          | Yes                                          | Yes                                                                        | Yes                    | No                                                              |
| Rhetorical       | Yes                                          | Yes                                                                        | No                     | Yes                                                             |
| Therapeutic      | No                                           | Yes                                                                        | No                     | No                                                              |
| Pre-announcement | Yes                                          | No                                                                         | Yes                    | Yes                                                             |

As discussed above, the term 'reply' is used to represent a situation where the recipient at a minimum reacts in a way that is appropriate to the question, i.e. yes or no , indicating doubt, or, in the case of wh-type questions, providing the requested information or indicating ignorance or non-committal. So giving a  mere  reply  (in  the  sense  stipulated  in  this  article)  does  not  imply  that  a positive, 'correct' answer is given. Th ere is a consequential diff  erence between the category sender expects recipient to have access to the requested information and sender  expects  a  reply .  Y ou  can  expect  a  reply  without  expecting  the recipient to know the answer, since a reply may be negative.

Th us, in the pre-announcement question, a reply is expected because the adjacency pair 'pre-announcement / no' is a prerequisite for the sequence to continue on to the sender eventually providing the information. As stated in the third preparatory condition, the sender does not expect the recipient to have access to the information, and hence the reply is required to be negative. Th e adjacency pair is locked to a no-reply as the preferred response, which is  another  way  of  saying  that  the  recipient's  ignorance  is  a  prerequisite  for the interaction to proceed appropriately. Th is is where the pre-announcement question diff  ers from the other four.

On a side note, it seems that only questions that condition yes / no answers are able to appear as pre-announcement questions, while the wh-types may only be found in the other four variants that we have discussed so far.

Another type of question is the echo question, which is characterized by the fact that the sender is not responsible for the speech act of asking, but rather for the speech act of reproducing an already stated question. Th is type of question belongs to a meta-linguistic register in that it restates or paraphrases another person's  question.  I  have  suggested  elsewhere  that  questions  like  these  are especially prominent in argumentative interaction, where reconstructions of the opponent's position are frequently seen (Nielsen 2005). Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1992 employ the argumentative roles protagonist and antagonist to represent the argumentative roles of defending a claim, and of contesting or criticising the claim, respectively (for further discussion of these concepts of argumentation theory see Nielsen 2016: chapter 9). Th e special case of the echo question is characterized by being employed by the protagonist when in a rhetorical move anticipating a question from the antagonist, as in example (4). A columnist uses the echo question to establish a situation where an imagined antagonist poses a question that he then sets off   to answer:

(4)

In general, the new Russia is getting a worse reputation than the old Sovjet Union, even with us, and that's a paradox. What the reason is? Th e reason is that we have been insulted by the attitude of Russia (…)

Quoted in Th erkelsen 2006: 221. (Transl. NMN)

As demonstrated by Th erkelsen (Th erkelsen 2006), an indicator of the echo question is the inverted word order compared to the other types of question discussed here. In the echo question the unmarked form 'what is the reason?' is inverted as 'what the reason is?' . Th is syntactic shift   is polyphonically coded as it echoes the voice of the recipient. Th us it codifi  es an external voice taking responsibility for the speech act conditions, a voice that cannot be identical to the sender (regarding the analysis of linguistic polyphony see Th erkelsen et  al  2007).  Finkbeiner (2020, current issue) treats verb-fi  nal wh-clauses in German and suggests that in their function as news headlines they have noninterrogative  illocutions.  When  not  acting  in  that  particular,  genre-specifi  c role, however, they retain an unmarked function as embedded interrogative wh-clauses - oft  en allowing for the 'echo'-interpretation suggested here.

We  can  now  expand  the  chart  with  yet  another  category  that  actually turns out to be distinctive from the other fi  ve types by virtue of the particular preparatory conditions involved. While the echo question is quite similar to the rhetorical question, it crucially diff  ers in the fact that the successful utterance of an echo question is conditional on the recipient not being expected to have advance access to the requested information.

Table 3. Expansion with echo question.

|                  | Sender has access to the requested information   | Sender expects the recipient to have access to the requested information   | Sender expects reply   | Sender intends to supply (or imply) the requested information   |
|------------------|--------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| Clarification    | No                                               | Yes                                                                        | Yes                    | No                                                              |
| Control          | Yes                                              | Yes                                                                        | Yes                    | No                                                              |
| Rhetorical       | Yes                                              | Yes                                                                        | No                     | Yes                                                             |
| Therapeutic      | No                                               | Yes                                                                        | No                     | No                                                              |
| Pre-announcement | Yes                                              | No                                                                         | Yes                    | Yes                                                             |
| Echo             | Yes                                              | No                                                                         | No                     | Yes                                                             |

Like the pre-announcement question, the echo question can be understood as a dialogue-structuring device. It has the basic function of committing or engaging the recipient,  but  in  its  rather  more  strategic/rhetorical  function, it also works by staging an imagined recipient asking for more information, eff  ectively  serving  to  retain  the  conversational  turn  while  concurrently simulating interaction.

Are there yet other types of questions that may be described by the proposed sets of preparatory conditions? We shall now proceed by taking a look at some of the combinations that have not yet been treated. One such combination is  the no,  no,  no,  no constellation.  Th is  type  of  question  could  be  called  a monologue question, since it mostly appears in theatrical or otherwise artistic contexts where an inner monologue is externalized for dramatic reasons:

(5)

Why do the birds go on singing?

Why does the sea rush to shore?

Don't they know it's the end of the world?

(Brenda Lee (1963): Th e End of the World

)

No reply is expected here, while neither the sender nor the recipient are aware of  the  answer,  nor  does  the  question  suggest  that  the  sender  is  obliged  or inclined to actually aff  ord an answer. Th is seems to follow from the assumption that the recipient in an internal monologue coincides with the sender. Th e monological question is also well known in types of self-reproach such as why did I not go home earlier?

Moreover,  tokens  can  likely  be  found  of  a  question  featuring  the combination no,  no,  yes,  no ,  i.e.  a  speech  act  where  the  only  preparatory condition in our system that is positively redeemed is a reply, a reply which, since the recipient is not expected to have access to the requested information, is  bound to be negative. Concurrently, the sender is in a similar ignorance (and therefore cannot intend to supply the requested information). One can imagine that this type of question can be found in contexts where it merely serves to consolidate the awareness of a common ignorance between sender and recipient. I propose to call this type the dialogical question. It represents a dialogization of the monological question - since a reply is required. How can it continue to rain? , What is the point that she should be taken away so young? , and so forth. In practice, drawing a distinction between monological and dialogical question tokens may prove to be highly dependent on context.

With the monologue and dialogue questions we are beginning to move towards  forms  of  expression  that  are  not  'real  questions'  in  so  far  as  they show some indirectness.  While  they  don't  seem  to  have  the  'real  question' characteristic  of  being  aimed  at  eliciting  or  producing  some  form  of information, they both seem to be able to count as forms of regret and to possess an inherent emotive function.

Table 4. Expansion with monologue and dialogue questions.

|                  | Sender has access to the requested information   | Sender expects the recipient to have access to the requested information   | Sender expects reply   | Sender intends to supply (or imply) the requested information   |
|------------------|--------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| Clarification    | No                                               | Yes                                                                        | Yes                    | No                                                              |
| Control          | Yes                                              | Yes                                                                        | Yes                    | No                                                              |
| Rhetorical       | Yes                                              | Yes                                                                        | No                     | Yes                                                             |
| Therapeutic      | No                                               | Yes                                                                        | No                     | No                                                              |
| Pre-announcement | Yes                                              | No                                                                         | Yes                    | Yes                                                             |
| Echo             | Yes                                              | No                                                                         | No                     | Yes                                                             |
| Monological      | No                                               | No                                                                         | No                     | No                                                              |
| Dialogical       | No                                               | No                                                                         | Yes                    | No                                                              |

On a more speculative level, I suggest that two additional types of questions, in the following referred to as the 'phatic' question and the 'off  ensive' question, should be considered, while acknowledging that these fi  nal analyses are quite tentative. One potential problem is that while the monologue and dialogue questions discussed above have aspects of indirectness, these two suggested question  types  are  clearly  indirect  speech  acts  in  the  sense  of  Searle  1979 (Searle 1979: 30-57) or alternatively, utterances that could be understood as forms of particular conversational implicature, following Grice 1975. For the present purpose we adopt Searle's rather crude analysis of indirectness, since its distinction between primary and secondary illocutions is a more accessible way to approach these question types, than is the concise, yet also complicated, framework of Grice.  Th e  determination  of  these  indirect  question  types  is considerably more complex than direct questions since the analysis needs to operate at two diff  erent levels simultaneously, i.e. the 'secondary illocution' (the literal meaning) and the 'primary illocution' (the implied meaning). While these speech act types do exhibit superfi  cial features of being questions (e.g. they are written with question marks etc), they are clearly not interrogative in terms of their primary illocutions, where they carry the forces of  greetings and charges, respectively.

In Roman Jakobson's account of language functions, the phatic function is  the  function  that  opens,  maintains  and  closes  down  linguistic  contact (Jakobson 1960), prototypes being greetings and salutations. Phatic questions comprise utterances such as How do you do? and What's up? Th ey are indirect speech acts in that their primary illocutionary function is to start or maintain communicative contact. Th erefore, a reply that literally adresses the requested information is normally not appropriate (Garfi  nkel's 1967 experiments show how breaching properties of common discourse is socially stressful (Garfi  nkel 1967: 42-44.)), while it will obviously also be inappropriate for the sender to supply the information, as the speech act is not really a question at all. So the phatic question seems to realise the yes-yes-no-no constellation in the system.

Off  ensive questions, with the constellation yes-yes-yes-yes , are also indirect speech acts, as they will normally function as accusations or reproaches such as: What was that for? , What do you think you're doing? or Do you think that was particularly clever? I suggest that a negative reply is the preferred response, counting as an acceptance of the reproach. While such a reply is desired, the question, by virtue of its indirect status, counts as the sender in fact conveying an act of reproach or accusation. In a sense, the sender expects the recipient to have access to the requested information, which explains why it is not entirely appropriate to answer I don't know to what do you think you are doing? simply because  this  reply  refl  ects  a  confusion  of  the  secondary  with  the  primary illocution.

Table 5. Expansion with phatic and off  ensive questions.

|                  | Sender has access to requested information   | Sender expects the recipient to have access to the requested information   | Sender expects reply   | Sender intends to supply (or imply) the requested information   |
|------------------|----------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| Clarification    | No                                           | Yes                                                                        | Yes                    | No                                                              |
| Control          | Yes                                          | Yes                                                                        | Yes                    | No                                                              |
| Rhetorical       | Yes                                          | Yes                                                                        | No                     | Yes                                                             |
| Therapeutic      | No                                           | Yes                                                                        | No                     | No                                                              |
| Pre-announcement | Yes                                          | No                                                                         | Yes                    | Yes                                                             |
| Echo             | Yes                                          | No                                                                         | No                     | Yes                                                             |
| Monological      | No                                           | No                                                                         | No                     | No                                                              |
| Dialogical       | No                                           | No                                                                         | Yes                    | No                                                              |
| Phatic           | Yes                                          | Yes                                                                        | No                     | No                                                              |
| Offensive        | Yes                                          | Yes                                                                        | Yes                    | Yes                                                             |

As already noted, these last types of question challenge the system's descriptive force,  mainly  because  they  are  clearly  indirect  and  consequently  harder  to disambiguate as speech act types in terms of primary illocution. An example that may be hard to place is Do you take me for a fool? which, although at fi  rst glance it seems to belong to the off  ensive category, is ambiguous with regard to categories 3 and 4, yielding something like the constellation yes-yes-?-? .

## 4. Concluding remarks

Th e  proposed  system  can  describe  diff  erences  between  a  range  of  speech acts, based on diff  erent preparatory conditions, speech acts which appear on the surface to be questions. In terms of combinatorics, a chart featuring four conditions, each of which realises a binary value, will generate a total of 16 possible combinations. However, four of these can already be excluded, namely any  case  of  'no'  to  the  sender  having  access  to  the  requested  information, and 'yes' to the sender intending to supply the information, as this would be logically incoherent. To be specifi  c, it can be observed that some of the four categories are logically interdependent, so conditions one and four are locked into a set of reciprocal entailment relations: if the sender intends to supply the requested information, then the sender must have access to the requested information. It follows that 'no' to condition one entails 'no' to condition four, while 'yes' to condition four entails 'yes' to condition one.

In consequence, there are twelve distinct options in this system, presented below in a systematic outline of the possible combinations:

|                  | Sender has access to requested information   | Sender expects the recipient to have access to the requested information   | Sender expects reply   | Sender intends to supply (or imply) the requested information   |
|------------------|----------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| Offensive        | Yes                                          | Yes                                                                        | Yes                    | Yes                                                             |
| Control          | Yes                                          | Yes                                                                        | Yes                    | No                                                              |
| Rhetorical       | Yes                                          | Yes                                                                        | No                     | Yes                                                             |
| Phatic           | Yes                                          | Yes                                                                        | No                     | No                                                              |
| Pre-announcement | Yes                                          | No                                                                         | Yes                    | Yes                                                             |
| ?                | Yes                                          | No                                                                         | Yes                    | No                                                              |
| Echo             | Yes                                          | No                                                                         | No                     | Yes                                                             |
| ?                | Yes                                          | No                                                                         | No                     | No                                                              |
| *                | No                                           | Yes                                                                        | Yes                    | Yes                                                             |
| Clarification    | No                                           | Yes                                                                        | Yes                    | No                                                              |
| *                | No                                           | Yes                                                                        | No                     | Yes                                                             |
| Therapeutic      | No                                           | Yes                                                                        | No                     | No                                                              |
| *                | No                                           | No                                                                         | Yes                    | Yes                                                             |
| Dialogical       | No                                           | No                                                                         | Yes                    | No                                                              |
| *                | No                                           | No                                                                         | No                     | Yes                                                             |
| Monological      | No                                           | No                                                                         | No                     | No                                                              |

Table 6. A systematic overview of the available combinations.

* indicates that the question is logically impossible because the sender's intention to communicate the requested information presupposes his having access to it.

?  indicates a question type that is logically possible within the system but has not been accounted for.

As  mentioned,  four  combinations  seem  to  be  logically  impossible,  which leaves us with two types of questions that have not been accounted for in this study, constellations yes-no-yes-no , and yes-no-no-no .

Th us,  the  system  has  described  ten  distinct  types  of  speech  acts,  all  of which seem to be able to function interrogatively, at least in their superfi  cial secondary illocutions.

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