404 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
Equally futile is the effort to establish, as distinctive feature 
of interrogation, an inverted order of words. On the one hand 
questions are asked without its aid, as for instance “Who is 
there?” On the other hand, inversion does not always make a 
sentence interrogative. In the closing lines of Lockslev Hall 
the inverted expression “Comes a vapor from the margin” does 
not intend a question. 
While then it must, be: admitted that rising inflection and in¬ 
version are used as helps to indicate the interrogative meaning, 
it seems to be proper, in view of their frequent omission, to rank 
them as only helps. 
Discarding these and other purely formal characteristics, I 
propose to look for 1 one substantial and essential, expecting to 
find it, as a matter of course, in the thought itself, which inter¬ 
rogative expression embodies. I turn accordingly to interroga¬ 
tive thought, and, first of all, to 
Indications offered by concurrent mind-phenomena. 
Under this title I wish to repeat the experiment performed 
upon the Imperative—to examine the* mental status pictured by 
the question, ini the light which may be shed by a contextual 
neighbor. 
In Hugo’s “Toilers of the Sea” I find that Captain Lethierry, 
overflowing with gratitude to one Grilliatt, a sailor, picturesquely 
asks “Where is he ? that I may eat him.” Examining the mental 
status of the questioner, I find an intention to eat Grilliatt, con¬ 
current or coincident with whatever other mental state may be 
expressed by the question. The question itself is apparently 
aimed to aid that intention. Conversely the intention explains 
or accounts for the question. Taking inventory of the latter, I 
find, at first sight, only that “Where” conveys the idea of unspe¬ 
cified place; that “he,” otherwise Grilliatt, suggests a person; 
that “is” encourages some faith in that person’s being in that un¬ 
specified place. In short, the utmost that I can rightly or 
wrongly develop from the dictionary values of words employed, 
is that Grilliatt is somewhere. This is hardly definite enough to 
invite explanation; and even if it did, the explanation offered by 
“that I may eat him” would hardly be sufficient or appropriate. 
Accordingly I feel obliged to find in “Where is he?” more 
meaning than at first appeared. The like is true of the follow¬ 
ing illustrations: “Where is the water-pitcher?—for I am 
