This is a direct question, but because it is a statement put forth to be argued it should be given the falling inflection. If a request is made of a presiding officer for information regarding what question is then before the body, and the officer replies with a direct question, he should give it the falling inflection, because he does not speak it as a question but as a statement in reply to the member’s question as to what is then before the meeting.
What does the falling inflection signify?
The falling inflection, in the main, signifies certainty. The arrival at a result, commands (whether negatively or positively constructed), and all positive words, phrases, and sentences, require, as a rule, the falling inflection.
The Arrival at a Result. We are all born in subjection, all born equally, high and low, governors and governed, in subjection to one great, immutable pre-existent law, prior to all our devices, and prior to all our contrivances, paramount to all our ideas, and all our sensations, antecedent to our very existence, by which we are knit and connected to the eternal frame of the universe, out of which we cannot stir.
—Burke
The result here is not reached until we come to the final phrase “out of which we cannot stir,” and although this is a negative phrase, so far as the construction goes, it requires the falling inflection because it closes the thought and is positive in its nature.
Commands. These things I command you, that ye love one another.
—St. John, xv., 17
This is a commandment given by Jesus to His disciples, and both phrases require the falling inflection. It makes no difference whether the command is to do or not to do a certain thing, all commandments, of whatever nature, require falling inflection; as,
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.