Pinning down the semantics of questions poses a challenge for the study of meaning. Unlike most declarative statements, questions cannot be assigned a truth value. They do not assert information about the world that can be easily verified as true or false, or accepted or rejected. Instead, their function as a speech act is to interrogate, to seek information about the world. Thus a truth‐conditional approach to the semantics of questions runs into a dead end. We must therefore evaluate the semantics of questions in terms of the propositions that serve as their answers. But here, a number of questions arise that shape our investigation. What counts as a suitable answer, in general or in a given discourse context? How does the variability of question types within and across the world's languages influence our theory of a unified semantics of questions? When questions are embedded under a matrix verb like “know,” which takes the question as a sentential complement, how does the semantics of questions feed into the assessment of the proposition expressed by this declarative utterance? What must the subject of the sentence know? Should they be required to know or list an exhaustive list of true answers or one true answer, should they know of the false answers that they are false? What answers are licensed? How can questions reflect a bias on the part of the speaker? These issues lie at the heart of an investigation of the semantics of questions.

中文翻译：

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问题的语义。

确定问题的语义对意义的研究提出了挑战。与大多数声明性声明不同，不能为问题分配真值。他们不主张关于世界的信息，这些信息很容易被证实为真或假，或者被接受或拒绝。取而代之的是，他们作为言语行为的功能是审讯，寻求有关世界的信息。因此，以事实为条件的方法来解决问题的语义学将陷入死胡同。因此，我们必须评估问题的语义用命题作为答案。但是，这里出现了一些影响我们调查的问题。总体上或在给定的语境中，什么才算是合适的答案？全球语言之内和之间的问题类型的可变性如何影响我们关于问题的统一语义的理论？当问题被嵌入到诸如“ know”之类的矩阵动词下时，它将问题作为句子的补语，那么问题的语义又如何将陈述性陈述所表达的命题纳入评价吗？句子的主语必须知道什么？是否应该要求他们知道或列出真实答案或一个真实答案的详尽列表，他们是否应该知道错误答案是错误的？哪些答案已获得许可？问题如何反映发言人的偏见？这些问题是调查问题语义的核心。