Examples include est-ce que in French, ли li in Russian, czy in Polish, чи chy in Ukrainian, ĉu in Esperanto, āyā آیا in Persian, কি ki in Bengali, 嗎/吗 ma in Mandarin Chinese, mı/mi/mu/mü[1] in Turkish, pa in Ladin, か ka in Japanese, 까 kka in Korean, ko/kö[1] in Finnish, tat in Catalan, (да) ли (da) li in Serbo-Croatian and al and ote in Basque.
(Example taken from an Internet forum)Interrogative pronouns in Australian Aboriginal languages are a diverse set of lexical items with functions extending far beyond simply the formation of questions (though this is one of their uses).
These pronominal stems are sometimes called ignoratives or epistememes because their broader function is to convey differing degrees of perceptual or epistemic certainty.
Often, a singular ignorative stem may serve a variety of interrogative functions that would be expressed by different lexical items in, say, English through contextual variation and interaction with other morphology such as case-marking.
In Jingulu, for example, the single stem nyamba may come to mean 'what', 'where', 'why' or 'how' through combination with locative, dative, ablative, and instrumental case suffixes: nyambaIGNORnyamarni2SG.ERGmanjkuskin.namenyamba nyamarni manjkuIGNOR 2SG.ERG skin.nameWhat skin are you?nyamba-mbili-kajiIGNOR-LOC-throughmankiyi-mindi-jusit-1DU.INCL-donyamba-mbili-kaji mankiyi-mindi-juIGNOR-LOC-through sit-1DU.INCL-doWhere are we sitting?Nyamba-rnaIGNOR-DATarrkuja-nga-nku-juscratch-1SG-REFL-doNyamba-rna arrkuja-nga-nku-juIGNOR-DAT scratch-1SG-REFL-doWhy are you scratching?Nyamba-arndi-kajiIGNOR-INST-throughnya-rriyi-rni2SG-go.FUT-FOCNyamba-arndi-kaji nya-rriyi-rniIGNOR-INST-through 2SG-go.FUT-FOCHow will you go?
(Adapted from Pensalfini[2]) Other closely related languages, however, have less interrelated ways of forming wh-questions with separate lexemes for each of these wh-pronouns.
This includes Wardaman, which has a collection of entirely unrelated interrogative stems: yinggiya 'who', ngamanda 'what', guda 'where', nyangurlang 'when', gun.garr-ma 'how many/what kind'.
[3] Mushin (1995)[4] and Verstraete (2018)[5] provide detailed overviews of the broader functions of ignoratives in an array of languages.
The latter focuses on the lexeme ngaani in many Paman Languages which can have a Wh-like interrogative function but can also have a sense of epistemic indefiniteness or uncertainty like 'some' or 'perhaps;' see the following examples from Umpithamu: Wh-question Ngaani-kuIGNOR-DATmi'athi-ngka=uurra-athungkucry-PRS=2PL.NOM-1SG.ACCNgaani-ku mi'athi-ngka=uurra-athungkuIGNOR-DAT cry-PRS=2PL.NOM-1SG.ACCWhy are you all crying for me?Adnominal / Determiner yukurungearngaaniIGNORyitha-n=antyampaleave-PST=1PL.EXCL.NOMkuurabehindyukurun ngaani yitha-n=antyampa kuuragear IGNOR leave-PST=1PL.EXCL.NOM behindWe left some gear behindAdverbial Yupatodaymiinthagoodiluwa3SG.NOMngaaniIGNORngama-lsee-IMPERFYupa miintha iluwa ngaani ngama-ltoday good 3SG.NOM IGNOR see-IMPERFPerhaps she is better today.