Among the strategies used by the adult to engage the child in a linguistic interaction, those involving questioning occupy a central position. One of the parameters usually taken into account to differentiate the type of questions directed to the child is the opposition between closed (i.e., yes/no) and open-ended questions. The relevance of that opposition is examined. Interactions between speech therapist and child are analyzed, underlining the methodological difficulties inherent in this type of research and illustrating the need to examine such data in a discourse analysis or conversational framework. Some ideas concerning the therapeutic role of the adult in such an interaction are also discussed. (Author/MSE)