ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of non-question interrogatives and to address in a principled way the distributional overlap between utterances and the identically worded and identically intoned questions. It investigates by looking at the intonational patterns of certain descriptive classes of interrogatives are not questions the chosen definition of questionhood, namely, inferentially assertive, rhetorical interrogatives, exclamatory interrogatives. The falling intonation of interrogative echo exclamations is in contrast to the obligatory final rise of typical echo questions. The difference in intonation correlates with fundamental difference in attitude and illocutionary force: unlike echo questions, echo exclamations. The variation in phrasal tones in indirect speech acts. The rhetorical speaker seems to be subscribing to educators' wisdom, adopting the didactic premise that what actively inferred vividly realized lastingly imprinted on the addressee's mind, contents of a lecture passively takes. Searle notes indirect directives, is generally plausible motivation: the desire to mitigate overt face-threat to the addressee through an off-record politeness strategy.
