What is a question? Why do we ask questions?

"What is a question?"

This reminds me of a conversation I had while driving with my daughter years ago at night when we came across a possum crossing the road:

"What is that?" she asked me.

"That's a possum" I replied.

"What is a possum?" she asked again.

"That..." I answered as I pointed.

So...

What is a question?

That thing you just asked.

Why do we ask questions?

Because we want answers.
Why do we want answers?
Because we are curious.
Why are we curious?
Because we have excess intelligence beyond what is required to meet basic survival needs and this motivates us to seek knowledge.

Why do we have excess intelligence beyond what is required to meet basic survival needs?

Hmmm... that's a much better question!

Because man is a rational being.

People ask questions because rational inquiry is part of our cognitive nature. In the Western philosophical tradition, this is associated with the concept of logos — not simply “speech,” but with the ability to search for reasons, explanations, and causes.

In Greek thought, there is the word “logos,” which has the meaning of speaking through the mind, i.e., I preform and pronounce through a reasoning, a speech through the mind. The mind of man is logical (logikos), and the immediate meaning of this word is “reason” (logos). That is, there must always be some “logos.” Man, then, since he is a rational being, forms logos, and tries to combine phenomena with their cause.

A question of wonder arises when there is a gap between what we perceive and what we understand. Wonder arises when something does not match our expectations (Aristotle). The question “why?” is therefore an expression of our attempt to understand causes and bring phenomena into a coherent order.

From a modern perspective, this also aligns with evolutionary theories: organisms that can predict causes, detect patterns, and reduce uncertainty have an advantage in survival. Curiosity, questioning, and metacognition are considered cognitive strategies for reducing uncertainty about the world.

So, we ask questions because we are rational beings who seek explanations.

You ask:

What is a question? Why do we ask questions?

Simply put, a question is a social act which requests information. It is an attempt to coordinate in the language-game, if you take Wittgenstein seriously. Generally information is required to judge (SEP) action. This shows the interdependence, philosophically of knowledge-that and knowledge-how (SEP). From WP:

A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammatical forms, typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are interrogative in form but may not be considered bona fide questions, as they are not expected to be answered.

Evolutionary, knowledge can be understood as an advantage in providing adaptable behavior. If you're interested in this perspective, you should consider reading up on evolutionary psychology. On this view, psychological adaptation is a fast form of biological adaptation. Consider, for instance, how knowledge and goals serves evolutionary fitness. Organisms that learn from their environment tend to do better under natural selection because they survive by way of intelligence. Using a grammar to convey experience and information is part of the social construction of knowledge.

Philosophers, logicians, and linguists have attempted to investigate questions in more detail. At the level of the speech act, perlocution is important to understanding the purpose of a question. Here the interface between knowledge and activity becomes detailed. Two terms you might avail yourself of is erotetics which looks at the logical content of questions and answers as a framework. The other is inquisitive semantics which looks a little more broadly at the logic in the context of context. Both might be seen through the lens of dynamic semantics (SEP), which is a linguistic formal semantic approach to understanding the growth of linguistic information over time.

Aristotle provides one answer to your questions. He begins his 'Metaphysics' by saying that human beings are naturally curious. We want to know things simply because of the kind of creatures we are. We ask questions almost automatically, from the simplest observations to the most abstract ideas. And in his view, the more general and abstract forms of knowledge are the highest ones.

Not sure if Aristotle would agree with this definition, but questions is how we try to satisfy our thirst for knowledge. If we want to get ripped we hit the gym, and if we act upon our desire to know we start to ask philosophical questions.

So that leads back to your original question: we are always wondering, always asking, always trying to understand. But why do we do that? Is there something in our evolutionary past that shaped this constant drive to ask “why”? Well, modern science has no answer but I think Aristotle does. I feel it myself all the time. I have a strong sense of metacognition, and my mind keeps producing questions about everything around me. It feels as if my thoughts are overflowing with curiosity and with the desire to learn more. And I keep wondering why my mind works this way in the first place.

You could just say:

"I want to know what time is it."

That's not technically a question, it's a statement (also, maybe, a bit rude, but it's just a bad example from my side^^).

You can look at question as a statement that requires an action from another entity.

"What time is it?"

It makes it clear you have to react to the statement: we make questions, a particular kind of statement, to clarify that someone/somehow has to react to the statement.

The answer to this is very simple. In the case of a rhetorical question, we ask it merely to get others to think about something. In the case of non-rhetorical questions, we seek to control our external environment in such a way as to enhance our brain's knowledge using the opposite of Intuition. Intuition can be thought of as a brain's natural ability to generate knowledge using perfect reason. Knowledge that is gained not using Intuition, but from the external environment, was known in Latin as EXPERSCIENTIAL. In English just say Experiential knowledge. The etymology of EXPERSCIENTIAL is enlightening here it is:

Ex = From out of, from outside of

Per = through

Scientia = knowing

Putting it all together

Experiential knowledge is knowledge obtained through knowing from outside of the mind, so like from your senses.

The knowledge that All bachelors are unmarried men is known through Intuition. You can know it just by knowing the meaning of the words, and using perfect reason to figure out it's true, after you understand its meaning.

By sharp contrast, consider the statement "Women go into heat." Usually it's only known experientially. So that is experiential knowledge, for most males, if they ever learn it at all.

I think the instinct to ask questions is closely related to the instinct for language in general.

One of the primary uses of language is conveying information from one mind to another. But how do we get someone to provide us with information that we want or need? Sometimes they can determine it intuitively, such as when we're participating in a group activity -- the most obvious example of this is the leader giving orders.

But much of the time people's information needs are not obvious. In this case, we've developed the practice of asking questions. It's a form of conveying information, where that information is your desire for other information. It's a component of a general social process: the usual reaction to learning that someone needs information you have is to provide that information to them.

Information sharing has proven beneficial to our species, so processes that make it more efficient have been selected for in evolution. Questions and answers are among them.

This is analogous to the behaviors that humans and many other animals have developed to request food, sex, etc. Consider it to be like baby birds chirping to get their parent to fetch food for them.