This paper is about a minor and so far neglected sentence type in German: wh-root infinitivals such as Wohin gehen? ‘Where (should one/we) go?’. I concentrate on describing their formal and interpretive properties in detail, and relate these properties in a nonarbitrary manner by suggesting ways in which the salient aspects of their interpretation, that is, (the specifics of) their modality, their subject interpretation, and their illocutionary use, could be derived from the interpretively relevant properties of their form.Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung-Berlin (3/02, 5/02), the University of Pennsylvania (4/02), and the University of Frankfurt (6/02). Thanks to all the audiences for valuable comments and suggestions. Special thanks for constructive discussion and help with specific points of the paper are owed to many: Rajesh Bhatt, Veronika Ehrich, Ewald Lang, Manfred Krifka, Ingo Reich, Inger Rosengren, Joachim Sabel, Hubert Truckenbrodt, Ede Zimmermann, Ilse Zimmermann as well as the editor, Mark Louden, and two anonymous referees. A preprint version of this paper (here considerably revised) appeared as Reis 2002.