Why

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‘Why’ is an interrogative pro-adverb used mostly in questions that are concerned with causality. Somebody asking “Why is the sky blue?” would want to know what circumstances have transpired to create the situation to make the sky appear blue.

‘Why’, like other interrogative words in English and other languages is created through Wh-movement syntactic transformation.

The word can also be used as a wh-island to embed clauses in questions and statements (e.g. “John wondered why she was late”, “Do you know why I am angry?”, or “That is why we close the gate”).

According to Joseph Greenberg’s linguistic universal No.12, ‘why’ and its equivalents in most other Subject Verb Object languages appear at the beginning of a question. Verb Subject Object languages like Tagalog and Irish always put this word at the beginning of the sentence as well, while Subject Object Verb languages like Japanese and Persian put the word at the end.

Songs

• “Why”, a song by Carly Simon
• “Why”, a song by Frankie Avalon
• “Why”, a song by Annie Lennox
• “Why“, a song by Buddy Feyne, sung by Nat King Cole
• “Why”, a song by Swift
• “Why”, a song by Jadakiss
• “Why?” a song by Jocelyn Enriquez
• “Why?”, a song by Bronski Beat
• “Why?”, a song by Discharge
• “Why”, a song by DJ Sammy
• “Why”, a song by Helloween
• “Why”, a song by Joe Satriani
• “Why?”, a song by Godsmack
• “Why” a song by System of a Down
• “Why”, a song by Cathy Dennis
• “Why” a song by Tracy Chapman
• “Why” a song by Shiny Grey
• “Why” a song by Daleka Obala
• “Why”, a song sung by Mokey Fraggle in a 1983 episode of Fraggle Rock
• “Why” a song by Michael Jackson and 3T.

Films

• Why? (1992)
• Why? (1913)
• Why? (1916)
• Why (1973)
• Why? (1995)
• Why? (2004)
• Why? (2005)

Artists

• Why? (Yoni Wolf, Matt Meldon, Josiah Wolf, and Doug McDiarmid), anticon, rapper
• Why?, UK folk band active in the 1990s
• WHY, a malaysian singer group.

Other uses

• A philosophical question (Why?) (Its alternative, “Why not?”) See also Meaning of life.
• Why, Arizona
• A Ruby Programmer (why the lucky stiff)
• Why?, a 1953 game show