Topics Language

Question Philosophically (and perhaps linguistically, what is the difference between the question, "who are you?" and "what are you?". To answer the former, I often describe something about myself like my name or that I'm a student. The latter is often posed to me when people ask about my ethnicity or national origin. And perhaps more broadly, how do we "know" which sorts of identifying information is pertinent in answering either? Thanks, and great site.

Accepted:
October 27, 2005

Comments

One way that you might distinguish "What are you?" from "Who are you?" is to take the former question to be asking what kind of thing you are (e.g., a rational animal), and to take the latter question to be asking what distinguishes you from other (maybe, every other) member of your kind.

When someone asks you one of the questions, you have to rely on context to decide what information is being asked for. Like you, I generally take "What are you?" to ask for more general information than "Who are you?"

You've really answered your own question: The difference between the two questions you mention is demonstrated by the difference between the possible answers to them.

Linguistically, wh-questions, as these are known, are derived from underlying structures that are more like declarative sentences. The wh-word then occurs in a more "natural" position. So, for example, the question "Who does John want to win?" is derived from: John wants who to win, and then the wh-word is (at least, ordinarily) moved to the front of the clause for reasons a linguist could explain. Acceptable answers result from replacing the wh-word by an appropriate sort of expression, and the character of the question is connected to the kind of expression that can appropriately replace the wh-word. The difference between the questions corresponds to the different grammatical roles the replacing expression plays (or, again, to the different grammatical roles the wh-word itself plays).

For who-questions, the replacing expression has to be a certain sort of noun phrase. It can be a name ("Fred") or a definite description ("the man in the brown hat"): Roughly, it has to be something that picks out an object. The word "who" can also be plural, in which case the replacing expression could be "Bob and Sue" or "the women wearing dresses". It seems, moreover, that who-questions require the replacing expression to denote, at the very least, an animate object: There's something undeniably odd about the answers "The Sun" and "The tallest mountain". And so there is some reason to say that "who" itself acts as a certain kind of noun phrase.

The kinds of expressions that can appropriately replace "who" cannot usually replace "what", and vice versa. answers to who-questions aFor what-questions, these are not appropriate. If we ask, "What does John want to be?" the replacing expression might be: "famous" (an adjective) or "a sailor" (an indefinite). The former plainly cannot replace "who". The latter can, but then my intuition, anyway, is that the answer isn't really a complete answer, but only a partial one.

All of that is massively simplified, but that's the basic story you'd get from linguistics.

How do you know these things? They are part of what you know as a native speaker of English. You don't know them consciously or explicitly, but you plainly do know then nonetheless.