ABSTRACT
Imperative theorists frequently hold not just that asking another a question is telling the other to answer it, issuing a command in the generic sense, but that it is specifically making a request — or, as is occasionally said or added, proffering an invitation1 — usually to answer the question, or something supposed to be equival ent. Often it is held that questions are commands because questions are requests, it being assumed that requests are commands.2 Such accounts have no explanatory value, since, as is clear from the derivation of the word request, a request is a type of question — as is also an invitation. But further, their advocates misconceive a request or an invitation as something other than a question: to wit, a command in the generic sense, a telling of somebody to do something. There are thus at least two confusions in such accounts: first, between questions as such and the specific types of question a request and an invitation belong to; and second, between ask ing and telling.3
