Particularities of partial interrogatives in the written didactic discourse

Abstract

Partial interrogatives (PIs) are very well highlighted at morphological level and are marked by the occurrence of the interrogative word. Therefore, they are best represented in the didactic discourse. Among them, those formulated by means of the interrogative words ce? ‘what’, care? ‘who/which/what’ and cum? ‘how’ stand out, as they account for more than 90% of such occurrences. The partial interrogatives identified in the written didactic discourse are mainly remarkable through the particular cases they describe in Romanian, such as those with “nonprototypical thematization”, the elliptical ones or those in association with other PIs or with various interrogative structures.

Keywords

• partial interrogative
• didactic discourse
• interrogative word
• emphatic stress
• epistemic values