ABSTRACT
The "rational" approaches to the study of questioning are pursued in philosophy, logic, and linguistics. The critical issues in these fields involve language events, i.e., the nature, structure, and meaning of sentences. The set-of-answers methodology suffers from a number of shortcomings. Two major problems involve context and pragmatics. More recent rational approaches to the study of questioning have indeed acknowledged the pragmatic level of conversational interaction. Researchers in artificial intelligence have developed computer systems that answer questions that users type into the system. A question answering mechanism displays intelligence to the extent that it can search efficiently through a large data base, derive answers that are not directly stored in the data base, and formulate responses both quickly and accurately. Cognitive psychology has had its share of contributions to the study of questions. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
