回声问句是一种直接问句，重复别人刚才问过的部分或全部问题，是回声话语的一种形式。回声问题也被称为“鹦鹉”问题或“请重复”问题。人们通常会重复或鹦鹉学舌地回答他们被问到的问题，原因是他们没有完全理解或听到别人说了什么，或者他们根本不相信有人会问这样的问题。使用升调或降调作为回音问题可以让我们澄清我们认为听到了什么。

实例和意见

Telemachus: "We're waiting for Odysseus to come home." Antinuous: "You're waiting for who to do what?" From "The Comeback" by Albert Ramsdell Gurney Mary: "What do you want?" George Bailey: "What do I want? Why, I'm just here to get warm, that's all!" From "It's a Wonderful Life" Holden: "I used to play checkers with her all the time." Stradlater: "You used to play what with her all the time?" Holden: "Checkers." From "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger, 1951

带回声问句的语调

"We use echo questions either because we did not fully hear or understand what was said, or because its content is too surprising to be believed. A: It cost $5,000. B: How much did it cost? A: His son's an osteopath. B: His son's a what? Echo questions are usually spoken with a rising intonation and with a strong emphasis on the wh-word (what, who, how, and so on)." From "A Glossary of Grammar Terms" by Geoffrey Leech, Edinburgh University Press, 2006

带有回声问题的移动操作

"Consider the following dialogue: A: He had said someone would do something. B: He had said who would do what? Speaker B largely echoes what Speaker A says, except for replacing someone by who and something by what. For obvious reasons, the type of question produced by speaker B is called an echo question. However, speaker B could alternatively have replied with a non-echo question like, 'Who had he said would do what?' "If we compare the echo question, He had said who would do what? with the corresponding non-echo question Who had, he said would do what? we find that the latter involves two movement operations which are not found previously. One is an auxiliary inversion operation by which the past-tense auxiliary had is moved in front of its subject he. The other is a wh-movement operation by which the wh-word who is moved to the front of the overall sentence, and positioned in front of had." From "English Syntax: An Introduction" by Geoffrey Leech, Cambridge University Press, 2004

提问

"A speaker may question a question by repeating it with a rising intonation. Note that we use normal question structures with inverted word order, not indirect question structures, in this case. " 'Where are you going?' 'Where am I going? Home.' 'What does he want?' 'What does he want? Money as usual.' 'Are you tired?' 'Am I tired? Of course not.' 'Do squirrels eat insects?' 'Do squirrels eat insects? I'm not sure.' " From "Practical English Usage" by Michael Swan, Oxford University Press, 1995