Indirect interrogative

Let a non-committal propositional attitude be one in which the actor (the bearer of the attitude) does not resolve a presupposed disjunction. An indirect interrogative clause is a substantive clause_i depending on a predicate or nominal of non-committal propositional attitude which_i bears a paradigmatic relation to an independent interrogative clause, Like the relation born by the dependent clause of b to the clause of #a.

.	a.	Has Irvin taken out the garbage?
	b.	Linda asked whether Irvin had taken out the garbage.

As with direct interrogatives, there are two basic kinds of indirect interrogatives:

Indirect polar (“yes/no”) interrogative: This is the kind of interrogative which, if independent, would expect a yes/no answer, as in b.
Indirect content (“question-word”) interrogative: This is the kind of interrogative which, if independent, would expect information replacing the interrogative proform, as in .

.	Linda asked where Irvin had put the garbage.

Here as in all the other cases, it is important that the definitions be holistic and that they refer to the function fulfilled. Definitions based on interrogative pronouns and the like, as they are often encountered, would not suffice 1) to identify an interrogative clause cross-linguistically and 2) to distinguish it from other constructions as, e.g., free relative clauses.

Indirect jussive

An indirect jussive clause¹ is a complement clause of a predicate (rarely, a substantive clause depending on a noun) with jussive (directive) meaning which bears a paradigmatic relation to an independent jussive clause, as in . Such a predicate has at least two arguments, a human being (the ordering instance) in actor function and a proposition (the order) in undergoer function. There are also trivalent jussive verbs that take a proposition as theme and an animate being as undergoer or addressee, as in b. The latter, however, normally makes part of the proposition in the theme.

.	a.	Take the garbage out!
	b.	Linda told Irvin [ to take the garbage out ].

Since jussive constructions involve a directive speech act, they are a kind of causative construction with distant involvement of the causer.

¹ The frequently encountered term ‘imperative clause’ is misleading, since imperative is a conjugation category which may or may not appear in a jussive sentence and cannot appear in an indirect jussive clause.