Yes-no question
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, a yes–no question, formally known as a polar question, is a question whose expected answer is either "yes" or "no"
. Formally, they present an exclusive disjunction
, a pair of alternatives of which only one is acceptable. In English, such questions can be formed in both positive and negative forms (e.g. "Will you be here tomorrow?" and "Won't you be here tomorrow?").
Yes–no questions are in contrast with non-polar wh-questions, with the five Ws
, which do not necessarily present a range of alternative answers, or necessarily restrict that range to two alternatives. (Questions beginning with "which", for example, often presuppose a set of several alternatives, from which one is to be drawn.)
There are several ambiguities in yes–no questions, both in how they are posed and answered.
and Latin
, yes–no questions are indicated by the addition of a special grammatical particle
or an enclitic. In some languages, such as in Modern Greek
, Portuguese
, and the Jakaltek language
, the only way to distinguish a yes–no question from a simple declarative statement
is the rising question intonation used when saying the question. (Such questions are labelled declarative questions
, and are also available as an option in those languages that have other ways of asking yes–no questions.) The use of rising question intonation in yes–no questions is one of the universals of human languages.
In Latin, the enclitic particle "-nē" (sometimes just "-n" in early Latin) can be added to the emphatic word in order to turn a declarative statement into a yes–no question. This usually forms a neutral yes–no question, implying neither answer (except where the context makes it clear what the answer must be). For example:
In Esperanto, the word "ĉu" added to the beginning of a statement makes it a polar question.
Yes–no questions are also formed in Latin with "nonne", implying that the interrogator thinks the answer to be the affirmative, and with "num", implying that the interrogator thinks the answer to be the negative. For examples:
In Chinese
, yes–no questions may take an A-not-A form.
There is an ambiguity in English as to whether certain questions actually are yes–no questions in the first place. Syntactically identical questions can be semantically different. This can be seen by considering the following ambiguous example,:
The question could be a yes–no question or could be a choice question. It could be asking the yes–no question of whether John played either of the games, to which the answer is yes or no; or it could be asking the choice question (which does not have a yes–no response) of which of the two games John played (with the presupposition that he played one or the other), to which the answer is the name of the game. Another such ambiguous question is "Would you like an apple or an orange?" to which the responses can be "An apple.", "An orange.", "Yes.", and "No.", depending from whether the question is seen as a choice question or a yes–no question. (The "yes." answer involves a further ambiguity, discussed below.)
A related ambiguity is questions which have the form of yes–no questions, but which are intended not to be. These are a class of questions that encompass indirect speech acts. The question "Can you reach the mustard?" is an example. In form and semantics it is a straightforward yes–no question, which can be answered either "yes, I can." or "No, I cannot.". But there is an indirect speech act (which Clark calls an elective construal) that can optionally be inferred from the question, namely "please pass the mustard". Such indirect speech acts flout Grice's maxim of quality. And the inference on the part of the listener is optional, one that can legitimately remain untaken.
Clark describes one study where a researcher telephoned fifty restaurants around Palo Alto, California
, asking without embellishment the question "Do you accept credit cards?". The three forms of reply given were:
Another part of the same study was the question "Do you have a price on a fifth of Jim Beam?". Out of 100 merchants, 40 answered "Yes.". A non-response bias
forced researchers to disregard the survey question asking tobacconist
s "Do you have Prince Albert?"; although the researchers' intent was to observe whether the merchants specified that they offered the tobacco brand as packaged in a can and/or a pouch, the merchants frequently hung up the phone, presumably because they believed themselves to be the victims of a popular prank call
.
s. In the Welsh language
, for example, the response "ydw" ("I am") has no such ambiguity when replying to a question.
Other languages also do not follow the custom, given by Grimes, with respect to the answers "yes" and "no". In New Guinea Pidgin and Huichol
, the answer given has the logical polarity implied by the form of the question. "Bai Renjinal i ranewe, o nogat?", a positive form of a question translated as "Will Reginald escape?", is answered "yes" (agreement that he will escape) or "nogat" (disagreement, he won't escape). Phrased negatively, however, as "Bai Rejinal i no ranewe, o nogat?" ("Won't Reginald escape?") the senses of the answers take the opposite polarity to English, following instead the polarity of the question. A response of "yes" is agreement that he will not escape, and a response of "nogayt" is disagreement, a statement that he will escape.
A further ambiguity with yes–no questions, in addition to that of polarity, is the ambiguity of whether an exclusive or inclusive disjunction is meant by the word "or". It can represent either. Conventionally, in English yes–no questions the "or" represents an exclusive disjunction. But this is not necessarily so. As with the "Would you like an apple or an orange?" question mentioned earlier, to which one possible answer, as a yes–no question, is "yes.", yes–no questions can also be taken to be inclusive disjunctions. The informativeness of the "or" in the question is low, especially if the second alternative in the question is "something" or "things". Though the "exclusive" and "inclusive" can be determined often in spoken language (the speaker will often lower their pitch at the end of an "exclusive" question, as opposed to raising it at the end of an "inclusive" question), this is a frequent source of humour for computer scientist
s and others familiar with Boolean logic
, who will give responses such as "yes" to questions such as "Would you like chicken or roast beef for dinner?". But the ambiguity is not confined to humour. The apple-or-orange question may be legitimately asking whether either is wanted, for example, and "Would you like an apple or something?" is indeed expecting either "yes" or "no" as a proper answer, rather than the answer "Something" that an exclusive disjunction would be requesting.
This ambiguity does not exist only in English. It exists in West Greenlandic Kalaallisut, for example. The question "Maniitsu-mu Nuum-mu=luunniit najugaqar-pa" ("Does he live in Maniitsoq or Nuuk?") is ambiguous as to whether exclusive or inclusive disjunction is meant. Commonly, this is clarified either by intonation (if the question is spoken) or the inclusion of an explicit question-word such as "sumi" ("where").
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, a yes–no question, formally known as a polar question, is a question whose expected answer is either "yes" or "no"
Yes and no
Yes and no are two words for expressing affirmatives and negatives respectively in English . Early Middle English had a four-form system, but Modern English has reduced this to a two-form system consisting of 'yes' and 'no'. Some languages do not answer yes-no questions with single words meaning...
. Formally, they present an exclusive disjunction
Exclusive disjunction
The logical operation exclusive disjunction, also called exclusive or , is a type of logical disjunction on two operands that results in a value of true if exactly one of the operands has a value of true...
, a pair of alternatives of which only one is acceptable. In English, such questions can be formed in both positive and negative forms (e.g. "Will you be here tomorrow?" and "Won't you be here tomorrow?").
Yes–no questions are in contrast with non-polar wh-questions, with the five Ws
Five Ws
In journalism, the Five Ws is a concept in news style, research, and in police investigations that are regarded as basics in information-gathering. It is a formula for getting the "full" story on something...
, which do not necessarily present a range of alternative answers, or necessarily restrict that range to two alternatives. (Questions beginning with "which", for example, often presuppose a set of several alternatives, from which one is to be drawn.)
There are several ambiguities in yes–no questions, both in how they are posed and answered.
How such questions are posed
Yes–no questions are formed in various ways is various languages. In English, a special word order (verb–subject–object) is used to form yes–no questions. In the Greenlandic language, yes–no questions are formed with a special verb morphology. In RussianRussian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, yes–no questions are indicated by the addition of a special grammatical particle
Grammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
or an enclitic. In some languages, such as in Modern Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, and the Jakaltek language
Jakaltek language
The Jakaltek language is a Mayan language of Guatemala spoken by around 90,000 Jakaltek people in the department of Huehuetenango and the adjoining part of Chiapas in southern Mexico...
, the only way to distinguish a yes–no question from a simple declarative statement
Sentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
is the rising question intonation used when saying the question. (Such questions are labelled declarative questions
Sentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
, and are also available as an option in those languages that have other ways of asking yes–no questions.) The use of rising question intonation in yes–no questions is one of the universals of human languages.
In Latin, the enclitic particle "-nē" (sometimes just "-n" in early Latin) can be added to the emphatic word in order to turn a declarative statement into a yes–no question. This usually forms a neutral yes–no question, implying neither answer (except where the context makes it clear what the answer must be). For example:
- Tu id veritus es.
- "You feared that."
- Tu-nē id veritus es?
- "Did you fear that?"
In Esperanto, the word "ĉu" added to the beginning of a statement makes it a polar question.
- Vi estas blua.
- "You are blue."
- Ĉu vi estas blua?
- "Are you blue?"
Yes–no questions are also formed in Latin with "nonne", implying that the interrogator thinks the answer to be the affirmative, and with "num", implying that the interrogator thinks the answer to be the negative. For examples:
In Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, yes–no questions may take an A-not-A form.
There is an ambiguity in English as to whether certain questions actually are yes–no questions in the first place. Syntactically identical questions can be semantically different. This can be seen by considering the following ambiguous example,:
- Did John play chess or checkers?
The question could be a yes–no question or could be a choice question. It could be asking the yes–no question of whether John played either of the games, to which the answer is yes or no; or it could be asking the choice question (which does not have a yes–no response) of which of the two games John played (with the presupposition that he played one or the other), to which the answer is the name of the game. Another such ambiguous question is "Would you like an apple or an orange?" to which the responses can be "An apple.", "An orange.", "Yes.", and "No.", depending from whether the question is seen as a choice question or a yes–no question. (The "yes." answer involves a further ambiguity, discussed below.)
A related ambiguity is questions which have the form of yes–no questions, but which are intended not to be. These are a class of questions that encompass indirect speech acts. The question "Can you reach the mustard?" is an example. In form and semantics it is a straightforward yes–no question, which can be answered either "yes, I can." or "No, I cannot.". But there is an indirect speech act (which Clark calls an elective construal) that can optionally be inferred from the question, namely "please pass the mustard". Such indirect speech acts flout Grice's maxim of quality. And the inference on the part of the listener is optional, one that can legitimately remain untaken.
Clark describes one study where a researcher telephoned fifty restaurants around Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
, asking without embellishment the question "Do you accept credit cards?". The three forms of reply given were:
- "Yes, we do." — The respondent assumed a straightforward yes–no question, taking the form of the question at face value.
- "Yes, we accept Mastercard and Visa." — The respondent assumed a straightforward yes–no question but provided additional information, either as explanation ("The answer is 'yes' because we accept these two.") or as anticipation or inference of a further request as to what credit cards are accepted.
- "We accept Mastercard and Visa." — The respondent not only took the question to be the indirect speech act, but also assumed that the question was not a yes–no question, despite its form, and so didn't provide a yes–no answer at all.
Another part of the same study was the question "Do you have a price on a fifth of Jim Beam?". Out of 100 merchants, 40 answered "Yes.". A non-response bias
Non-response bias
Non-response bias occurs in statistical surveys if the answers of respondents differ from the potential answers of those who did not answer.- Example :...
forced researchers to disregard the survey question asking tobacconist
Tobacconist
A tobacconist is an expert dealer in tobacco in various forms and the related accoutrements .Such accoutrements include pipes, lighters, matches, pipe cleaners, pipe tampers, ashtrays, humidification devices, hygrometers, humidors, cigar cutters, and more. Books and magazines, especially ones...
s "Do you have Prince Albert?"; although the researchers' intent was to observe whether the merchants specified that they offered the tobacco brand as packaged in a can and/or a pouch, the merchants frequently hung up the phone, presumably because they believed themselves to be the victims of a popular prank call
Prank call
A prank call is a form of practical joke committed over the telephone. Prank phone calls began to gain an America-wide following over a period of many years, as they gradually became a staple of the obscure and amusing cassette tapes traded amongst musicians, sound engineers, and media traders...
.
How such questions are answered
According to Grimes, the answer "yes" asserts a positive answer and the answer "no" asserts a negative answer, irrespective of the form of the question. But in fact simple "yes" or "no" word sentence answers to yes–no questions can be ambiguous in English. For example, a "yes" response to the question "You don't beat your wife?" could mean either "yes, I don't beat my wife." or "yes, I do beat my wife." depending from whether the respondent is replying with the truth-value of the situation, or is replying to the polarity used in the question. This ambiguity does not exist in languages that employ echo answerEcho answer
In linguistics, an echo answer or echo response is a way of answering a polar question without using words for yes and no. The verb used in the question is simply echoed in the answer, negated if the answer has a negative truth-value...
s. In the Welsh language
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
, for example, the response "ydw" ("I am") has no such ambiguity when replying to a question.
Other languages also do not follow the custom, given by Grimes, with respect to the answers "yes" and "no". In New Guinea Pidgin and Huichol
Huichol language
The Huichol language is an indigenous language of Mexico which belongs to the Uto-Aztecan language family. It is spoken by the ethnic group widely known as the Huichol , whose mountainous territory extends over portions of the Mexican states of Jalisco, Nayarit, and Durango, mostly in Jalisco...
, the answer given has the logical polarity implied by the form of the question. "Bai Renjinal i ranewe, o nogat?", a positive form of a question translated as "Will Reginald escape?", is answered "yes" (agreement that he will escape) or "nogat" (disagreement, he won't escape). Phrased negatively, however, as "Bai Rejinal i no ranewe, o nogat?" ("Won't Reginald escape?") the senses of the answers take the opposite polarity to English, following instead the polarity of the question. A response of "yes" is agreement that he will not escape, and a response of "nogayt" is disagreement, a statement that he will escape.
A further ambiguity with yes–no questions, in addition to that of polarity, is the ambiguity of whether an exclusive or inclusive disjunction is meant by the word "or". It can represent either. Conventionally, in English yes–no questions the "or" represents an exclusive disjunction. But this is not necessarily so. As with the "Would you like an apple or an orange?" question mentioned earlier, to which one possible answer, as a yes–no question, is "yes.", yes–no questions can also be taken to be inclusive disjunctions. The informativeness of the "or" in the question is low, especially if the second alternative in the question is "something" or "things". Though the "exclusive" and "inclusive" can be determined often in spoken language (the speaker will often lower their pitch at the end of an "exclusive" question, as opposed to raising it at the end of an "inclusive" question), this is a frequent source of humour for computer scientist
Computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....
s and others familiar with Boolean logic
Boolean logic
Boolean algebra is a logical calculus of truth values, developed by George Boole in the 1840s. It resembles the algebra of real numbers, but with the numeric operations of multiplication xy, addition x + y, and negation −x replaced by the respective logical operations of...
, who will give responses such as "yes" to questions such as "Would you like chicken or roast beef for dinner?". But the ambiguity is not confined to humour. The apple-or-orange question may be legitimately asking whether either is wanted, for example, and "Would you like an apple or something?" is indeed expecting either "yes" or "no" as a proper answer, rather than the answer "Something" that an exclusive disjunction would be requesting.
This ambiguity does not exist only in English. It exists in West Greenlandic Kalaallisut, for example. The question "Maniitsu-mu Nuum-mu=luunniit najugaqar-pa" ("Does he live in Maniitsoq or Nuuk?") is ambiguous as to whether exclusive or inclusive disjunction is meant. Commonly, this is clarified either by intonation (if the question is spoken) or the inclusion of an explicit question-word such as "sumi" ("where").
Further reading
- Halliday, M.A.K., and Greaves, W.S. (2008). Intonation in the Grammar of English, London, Equinox.