Latin Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, teachers, and students wanting to discuss the finer points of the Latin language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
The enclitic -ne is used for binary questions where you expect a yes or no answer. Does an enclitic exist for open-ended questions, like "where do you want to have dinner", or "who is that"?
Is this generally moot because the rest of the sentence indicates whether something is a question or not?
There is no such enclitic, at least not a common one by any measure. And what would you need it for? If a question does not ask for a yes or a no, it has a specific question word indicating what is wanted: quis, quando, cur, unde…
As Sebastian says in his answer to the linked question: -ne is not used when we have a question word like quid or ubi.
Enclitics can be used in all questions: Ubi saltant maritus uxorque? The enclitic -que is used, but it does not indicate a question. The only enclitic indicating a question is -ne.
As noted in Sebastian's answer, binary questions can be formed without -ne, using nonne or num. But when the question is not binary, using -ne is not really an option.
