Yes and no
Encyclopedia
Yes and no are two words for expressing affirmatives and negatives respectively in English (e.g. "Are you hungry?" "Yes, I am."). 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 question
s with single words meaning 'yes' or 'no'. At least one, Welsh, is widely but erroneously believed to have no words for yes and no. In fact it has, these being but one of the many ways in which yes-no questions are answered in Welsh. Welsh and Finnish are among several languages that employ echo answer
s rather than words for yes and no in such circumstances. Other languages have systems named the two-form, three-form, and four-form systems, depending on how many words for yes and no they employ. Some languages, such as Latin, have no yes-no word systems at all.
The words yes and no are not easily classified into any of the eight conventional parts of speech. Although sometimes classified as interjection
s, they do not qualify as such, nor are they adverb
s. They are sometimes classified as a part of speech in their own right, sentence words
, word sentences, or pro-sentence
s, although that category contains more than yes and no and not all linguists include them in their lists of sentence words. Sentences consisting solely of one of these two words are classified as minor sentences.
The differences among languages, the fact that in different languages the various words for yes and no have different parts of speech and different usages, and that some languages lack a 'yes-no' word system, makes idiomatic translation difficult.
s, these words do not express emotion or act as calls for attention; they are not adverb
s because they do not qualify any verb, adjective, or adverb. They are sometimes classified as a part of speech in their own right, sentence words or word sentences.
This is the position of Otto Jespersen
, who states that "'Yes' and 'No' […] are to all intents and purposes sentences just as much as the most delicately balanced sentence
s ever uttered by Demosthenes
or penned by Samuel Johnson
."
Georg von der Gabelentz, Henry Sweet, and Wegener
have all written on the subject of sentence words, Wegener calling them "Wortsätze". Both Sweet and Wegener include yes and no in this category, with Sweet treating them separately from both imperatives and interjections, although Gabelentz does not.
Watts classifies yes and no as grammatical particle
s, in particular response particles. He also notes their relationship to the interjections oh and ah, which is that the interjections can precede yes and no but not follow them. Oh as an interjection expresses surprise, but in the combined forms oh yes and oh no merely acts as an intensifier
; but ah in the combined forms ah yes and ah no retains its standalone meaning, of focusing upon the previous speaker's or writer's last statement. The forms *yes oh, *yes ah, *no oh, and *no ah are grammatically ill-formed. Aijmer similarly categorizes the yes and no as response signals or reaction signals.
Ameka classifies these two words in different ways according to context. When used as back-channel
items, he classifies them as interjections; but when they are used as the responses to a yes-no question
, he classifies them as formulaic words. The distinction between an interjection and a formula is, in Ameka's view, that the former does not have an addressee (although it may be directed at a person), whereas the latter does. The yes or no in response to the question is addressed at the interrogator, whereas yes or no used as a back-channel item is a feedback usage, an utterance that is said to oneself. However, Sorjonen criticizes this analysis as lacking empirical work on the other usages of these words, in addition to interjections and feedback uses.
Bloomfield and Hockett classify the words, when used to answer yes-no questions, as special completive interjections. They classify sentences comprising solely one of either of these two words as minor sentences.
Sweet classifies the words in several ways. They are sentence-modifying adverbs, adverbs that act as modifiers to an entire sentence. They are also sentence words, when standing alone. They may, as question responses, also be absolute forms that correspond to what would otherwise be the not in a negated echo response. For example, a "No." in response to the question "Is he here?" is equivalent to the echo response "He is not here.". Sweet observes that there is no correspondence with a simple yes in the latter situation, although the sentence-word "Certainly." provides an absolute form of an emphatic echo response "He is certainly here.". (Many other adverbs can also be used as sentence words in this way.)
Unlike yes, no can also be an adverb of degree, applying to adjectives solely in the comparative (e.g. no greater, no sooner, but not no soon or no soonest), and an adjective when applied to nouns (e.g. "He is no fool." and Dyer's "No clouds, no vapours intervene.")
Grammarians of other languages have created further, similar, special classifications for these types of words. Tesnière classifies the French oui and non as phrasillons logiques (along with voici). Fonagy observes that such a classification may be partly justified for the former two, but suggests that pragmatic holophrases is more appropriate.
for no. These forms are particularly useful for speakers who are unable to articulate the actual words yes and no because they are using their mouths for other tasks, such as eating for example, or because they are gag
ged.
The word "aye" is a frequent synonym for "yes", although not always officially acknowledged as such. In December 1993 a witness in a Scottish court who had answered "aye" to confirm he was the person summoned was told by the Sheriff that he must answer either "yes" or "no". When his name was read again and he was asked to confirm it, he answered "aye" again, and was imprisoned for 90 minutes for contempt of court
. On his release he said "I genuinely thought I was answering him".
Both words are derived from adverbs in Old English (OE). Yes is derived from a compound of the OE adverb yea, which means surely, and so, and is thus surely so, while no comes from an OE adverb that means never. Whilst Modern English has a two-form system for affirmatives and negatives, Early Modern English
(EME) in fact had a four-form system, comprising the words yea, nay, yes, and no. This is exemplified by the following passage from Much Ado about Nothing
:
Benedick's yea is the answer to a positively framed question. The answers to positively framed questions ("Will he go?") were yea and nay, whilst the answers to negatively framed questions ("Will he not go?") were yes and no. This subtle grammatical nicety of EME is recorded by Sir Thomas More
in his critique of William Tyndale
's translation of the New Testament into EME, which was then quoted as an authority by later scholars:
In fact, More's exemplification of the rule actually contradicts his statement of what the rule is. This went unnoticed by scholars such as Horne Tooke, Robert Gordon Latham
, and Trench, and was first pointed out by George Perkins Marsh
in his Century Dictionary, where he corrects More's incorrect statement of the first rule, "No aunswereth the question framed by the affirmative.", to read nay. That even More got the rule wrong, even whilst himself dressing-down Tyndale for getting it wrong, is seen by scholars such as Furness as evidence that the distinction between these four words was "truth, too subtle a distinction for practice". Benedick's answer of yea is a correct application of the rule, but as observed by W. A. Wright "Shakespeare does not always observe this rule, and even in the earliest times the usage appears not to have been consistent". Furness notes that this is indeed the case in the following, where Hermia's answer should, in following the rule, have been yes:
Marsh himself found no evidence of a four-form system in Mœso-Gothic
, although he reported finding "traces" in Old English. He observed that in the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, positively-phrased questions are answered positively with gea (John 21:15,16) and negatively with ne (Luke 12:51; 13:5), nese (John 21:5; Matthew 13:29), and nic (John 18:17); whilst negatively phrased questions are answered positively with gyse (Matthew 17:25) and negatively with nâ (John 8:10).
Marsh calls this four-form system of EME a "needless subtlety". Tooke called it a "ridiculous distinction", with Marsh concluding that Tooke believed Thomas More to have simply made this rule up, and observing that Tooke is not alone in his disbelief of More. Marsh points out (having himself analyzed the works of John Wycliffe
, Geoffrey Chaucer
, John Gower
, John Skelton
, and Robert of Gloucester
, and Piers Ploughman and Le Morte d'Arthur
to see where and how these words were used) that the distinction did exist, however, and was generally and fairly uniformly observed in EME from the time of Chaucer to the time of Tyndale. "yes" and "no" were reserved for answering negatively-phrased questions, whilst yea and nay served both as answers to positively-phrased questions and as normal intensifier
s in responses to non-interrogative statements. But after the time of Tyndale, the four-form system was rapidly replaced by the modern two-form system.
, Swedish
, Norwegian
, Icelandic
, Hungarian
, German
, and French
all have three-form systems, with two affirmative words and one negative. Swedish and Danish have ja, jo, and nej. Norwegian has ja, jo, and nei. Icelandic has já, jú and nei. Hungarian has igen, de, and nem. German has ja, doch, and nein. French has oui, si, and non. In a three-form system the affirmative response to a positively-phrased question is the unmarked affirmative, the affirmative response to a negatively-phrased question is the marked
affirmative, and the negative response to both forms of question is the (single) negative. So, for example, in Norwegian the affirmative answer to "Snakker du norsk?" ("Do you speak Norwegian?") is "Ja.", and the affirmative answer to "Snakker du ikke norsk?" ("Don't you speak Norwegian?") is "Jo.", whilst the negative answer to both questions is "Nei.".
Swedish, and to some extent Danish and Norwegian, also has additional forms javisst and jovisst, analogous to ja and jo, to indicate a strong affirmative response. Swedish and Danish also have the forms joho and nehej, which both indicate stronger response than jo or nej. Jo can also be used as an emphatic contradiction of a negative statement.
has a four-form system. The affirmative and negative responses to positively-phrased questions are da and nu, respectively. But in responses to negatively-phrased questions they are prefixed with ba (i.e. ba da and ba nu). nu is also used as a negation adverb, infixed between subject and verb. Thus, for examples, the affirmative response to the negatively phrased question "N-ai plătit?" ("Didn't you pay?") is "Ba da." ("Yes."—i.e. "I did pay."), and the negative response to a positively-phrased question beginning "Se poate să …?" ("Is it possible to …?") is "Nu, nu se poate." ("No, it is not possible."—note the use of nu for both no and negation of the verb.)
, for example, tak (thus, so) and nie (not) are adverbs. Russian
has the adverbs да and нет and Finnish
does not generally answer yes-no questions with either adverbs or interjections but answers them with a repetition of the verb in the question, negating it if the answer is the negative. (This is an echo response.) The answer to "Tuletteko kaupungista?" ("Are you coming from town?") is the verb form itself, "Tulemme." ("We are coming."). Negative questions are answered similarly. Negative answers are just the negated verb form. The answer to "Tunnetteko herra Lehdon?" ("Do you know Mr Lehto?") is "En tunne" ("I don't know.") or simply "En." ("I don't."). However, Finnish does also have particle words for "yes": "Kyllä" (formal) and "joo" (colloquial, never used in writing). A yes-no question can be answered "yes" with either "kyllä" or "joo", which are not conjugated according to the person and plurality of the verb. "Ei", however, is always conjugated.
It is often said that Welsh
has no words at all for yes and no. This is untrue. It has ie and nage. However, these are used only in specialized circumstances, and are but some of the many ways in Welsh of saying yes or no. As in Finnish, the main way to state yes or no, in answer to yes-no questions, is to echo the verb of the question. So the answers to "Ydy Ffred yn dod?" ("Is Ffred coming?") are either "Ydy." ("He is coming.") or "Nac ydy." ("He is not coming."). In general, the negative answer is the positive answer combined with nag. As in Finnish, this avoids the issue of what an unadorned yes means in response to a negative question. Whilst a yes response to the question "You don't beat your wife?" is ambiguous in English, the Welsh response ydw has no ambiguity. The same would apply for Finnish, where the question would be answered with en (I don't). For more information on yes and no answers to yes-no questions in Welsh, see Jones, listed in further reading.
Irish
and other Gaelic languages do not have any words for "yes" or "no". Instead an echo response of the verb used to ask the question is used. Sometimes the verb used is "Tá" (to be). Example "An bhfuil sé ag teacht" (Is he coming). Answer: "Tá" (Is) or "Níl" (Is not). More frequently another verb will be used. Example "Ar chuala sé" (Did he hear). Answer "Chuala" (heard) or "Níor chuala" (Did not hear). Irish people frequently give echo answers in English as well. Example: "Did you hear?". Answer "I heard/I did". This also happens in Galician language
.
Latin has no single words for yes and no. Their functions as intensifier
s and interjections are taken up by using the vocative case
. Their functions as word sentence responses to yes-no questions are taken up by sentence adverbs, single adverbs that are sentence modifiers and that also can be used as word sentences. There are several such adverbs which are classed as truth-value adverbs—including certe, fortasse, nimirum, plane, vero, etiam, sane, minime, and videlicet. They express the speaker's/writer's feelings about the truth value of a proposition. They, in conjunction with the negator non, are used as responses to yes-no questions. For examples:
Latin also employs echo responses.
So, too, does Chinese
. In all dialects, yes-no questions are often posed in A-not-A form, and the replies to such questions are echo answer
s that echo either A or not A. The closest equivalents to yes and no are to state "是" (shì; "It is the case.") and "不是" (búshì; "It is not the case."). (In Cantonese, the preceding are 係 hai6 and 唔係 m4 hai6, respectively.) When used as an interjection, No! is often said as 不要 (literally, "do not want" or "do not"). The now-infamous bootleg version of Star Wars Episode III, poorly translated from Chinese to English, translated Darth Vader's cry of "Noooooooo" (不要) as "Do not want"; this translation error became an internet meme
.
Japanese
does not have words for yes and no. The words "はい" (hai) and "いいえ" (iie) are mistaken by English speakers for equivalents to yes and no, but they actually signify agreement or disagreement with the proposition put by the question – i.e. "That's correct." or "That's incorrect."
Like the English contraction of OE yea so into yes, the words for yes and no in other languages originate from a process of devaluation and semantic erosion. The Hungarian
strong affirmative persze was originally the Latin phrase per se intelligitur (it stands to reason), for example. German nein similarly is derived from the Old High German
ni ein, which means not a single one. (In Latin, non similarly devolved from noenum, which also means not a single.) The French oui was formerly oïl (after which Langue d'oïl is named) which in turn came from the Vulgar Latin
hoc ille, meaning this one (i.e. "it is this one").
These differences between languages make translation difficult. No two languages are isomorphic
, even at the elementary level of the words for yes and no. Translation from two-form to three-form systems is something that English-speaking schoolchildren learning French or German soon encounter. But the mapping is not even as simple as converting two forms into three. There are many idioms, such as reduplication (in French, German, and Italian) of affirmatives for emphasis (e.g. the German ja ja ja). Furthermore, the mappings are one-to-many in both directions. The German ja has no fewer than 13 English equivalents that vary according to context and usage (yes, yeah, and no when used as an answer; well, alright, so, and now, when used for segmentation; oh, ah, uh, and eh when used an interjection; and do you, will you, and their various inflections when used as a marker for tag question
s) for example. Moreover, both ja and doch are frequently used as additional particle
s for conveying nuanced meaning where in English no such particle exists. Straightforward, non-idiomatic, translations from German to English and then back to German can often result in the loss of all of the modal particles such as ja and doch from a text.
Translation from languages that have word systems to those that do not, such as Latin, is similarly problematic. As Calvert says, "[s]aying yes or no takes a little thought in Latin".
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
had a four-form system, but Modern English
Modern English
Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, completed in roughly 1550.Despite some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern...
has reduced this to a two-form system consisting of 'yes' and 'no'. Some languages do not answer yes-no question
Yes-no question
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...
s with single words meaning 'yes' or 'no'. At least one, Welsh, is widely but erroneously believed to have no words for yes and no. In fact it has, these being but one of the many ways in which yes-no questions are answered in Welsh. Welsh and Finnish are among several languages that employ echo answer
Echo 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 rather than words for yes and no in such circumstances. Other languages have systems named the two-form, three-form, and four-form systems, depending on how many words for yes and no they employ. Some languages, such as Latin, have no yes-no word systems at all.
The words yes and no are not easily classified into any of the eight conventional parts of speech. Although sometimes classified as interjection
Interjection
In grammar, an interjection or exclamation is a word used to express an emotion or sentiment on the part of the speaker . Filled pauses such as uh, er, um are also considered interjections...
s, they do not qualify as such, nor are they adverb
Adverb
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....
s. They are sometimes classified as a part of speech in their own right, sentence words
Sentence words
Sentence words are single words that form a full sentence, such as "Alas." and "Yes." and "No.". Henry Sweet described them as "a variety of words which have the peculiarity of always forming a sentence by themselves". The Dutch linguist J. M. Hoogvliet calls them "volzinwoorden"...
, word sentences, or pro-sentence
Pro-sentence
A pro-sentence is a function word or expression that substitutes for a whole sentence whose content is recoverable from the context. Pro-sentences are a kind of pro-forms and are therefore anaphoric....
s, although that category contains more than yes and no and not all linguists include them in their lists of sentence words. Sentences consisting solely of one of these two words are classified as minor sentences.
The differences among languages, the fact that in different languages the various words for yes and no have different parts of speech and different usages, and that some languages lack a 'yes-no' word system, makes idiomatic translation difficult.
English grammar classification
Although sometimes classified as interjectionInterjection
In grammar, an interjection or exclamation is a word used to express an emotion or sentiment on the part of the speaker . Filled pauses such as uh, er, um are also considered interjections...
s, these words do not express emotion or act as calls for attention; they are not adverb
Adverb
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....
s because they do not qualify any verb, adjective, or adverb. They are sometimes classified as a part of speech in their own right, sentence words or word sentences.
This is the position of Otto Jespersen
Otto Jespersen
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen or Otto Jespersen was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language.He was born in Randers in northern Jutland and attended Copenhagen University, earning degrees in English, French, and Latin...
, who states that "'Yes' and 'No' […] are to all intents and purposes sentences just as much as the most delicately balanced sentence
Balanced sentence
A balanced sentence is a sentence that employs parallel structure of approximately the same length and importance.-Examples:#"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."...
s ever uttered by Demosthenes
Demosthenes
Demosthenes was a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by...
or penned by Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
."
Georg von der Gabelentz, Henry Sweet, and Wegener
Wegener
Wegener may refer to:* Alfred Wegener , German geologist and meteorologist**Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research**Wegener Canyon, undersea canyon**Mount Wegener, Antarctic mountain in the Read Mountains in the Shackleton Range...
have all written on the subject of sentence words, Wegener calling them "Wortsätze". Both Sweet and Wegener include yes and no in this category, with Sweet treating them separately from both imperatives and interjections, although Gabelentz does not.
Watts classifies yes and no as 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...
s, in particular response particles. He also notes their relationship to the interjections oh and ah, which is that the interjections can precede yes and no but not follow them. Oh as an interjection expresses surprise, but in the combined forms oh yes and oh no merely acts as an intensifier
Intensifier
Intensifier is a linguistic term for a modifier that amplifies the meaning of the word it modifies. Examples are "very," "quite," "extremely," "highly," and "greatly." An intensifier is the opposite of a qualifier, a modifier that weakens the word modified: "fairly," "somewhat," "rather," "a...
; but ah in the combined forms ah yes and ah no retains its standalone meaning, of focusing upon the previous speaker's or writer's last statement. The forms *yes oh, *yes ah, *no oh, and *no ah are grammatically ill-formed. Aijmer similarly categorizes the yes and no as response signals or reaction signals.
Ameka classifies these two words in different ways according to context. When used as back-channel
Back-channel
-In telecommunications:A back-channel is typically a low-speed, or less-than-optimal, transmission channel in the opposite direction to the main channel.-In IT Security:...
items, he classifies them as interjections; but when they are used as the responses to a yes-no question
Yes-no question
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...
, he classifies them as formulaic words. The distinction between an interjection and a formula is, in Ameka's view, that the former does not have an addressee (although it may be directed at a person), whereas the latter does. The yes or no in response to the question is addressed at the interrogator, whereas yes or no used as a back-channel item is a feedback usage, an utterance that is said to oneself. However, Sorjonen criticizes this analysis as lacking empirical work on the other usages of these words, in addition to interjections and feedback uses.
Bloomfield and Hockett classify the words, when used to answer yes-no questions, as special completive interjections. They classify sentences comprising solely one of either of these two words as minor sentences.
Sweet classifies the words in several ways. They are sentence-modifying adverbs, adverbs that act as modifiers to an entire sentence. They are also sentence words, when standing alone. They may, as question responses, also be absolute forms that correspond to what would otherwise be the not in a negated echo response. For example, a "No." in response to the question "Is he here?" is equivalent to the echo response "He is not here.". Sweet observes that there is no correspondence with a simple yes in the latter situation, although the sentence-word "Certainly." provides an absolute form of an emphatic echo response "He is certainly here.". (Many other adverbs can also be used as sentence words in this way.)
Unlike yes, no can also be an adverb of degree, applying to adjectives solely in the comparative (e.g. no greater, no sooner, but not no soon or no soonest), and an adjective when applied to nouns (e.g. "He is no fool." and Dyer's "No clouds, no vapours intervene.")
Grammarians of other languages have created further, similar, special classifications for these types of words. Tesnière classifies the French oui and non as phrasillons logiques (along with voici). Fonagy observes that such a classification may be partly justified for the former two, but suggests that pragmatic holophrases is more appropriate.
The English four-form and two-form systems
There are many variants of yes and no in English. Two such spoken forms are transcribed into writing as Uh-huh or Mm-hmm ("yes", with accent on the second syllable) and Uh-uh or M-mm ("no", with accent on the first syllable). Their sounds are a nasal or non-nasal sound interrupted by a voiceless breathy interval for yes, and by a glottal stopGlottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
for no. These forms are particularly useful for speakers who are unable to articulate the actual words yes and no because they are using their mouths for other tasks, such as eating for example, or because they are gag
Gag
A gag is usually a device designed to prevent speech, often as a restraint device to stop the subject from calling for help. This is usually done by blocking the mouth, partially or completely, or attempting to prevent the tongue, lips, or jaw from moving in the normal patterns of speech. They are...
ged.
The word "aye" is a frequent synonym for "yes", although not always officially acknowledged as such. In December 1993 a witness in a Scottish court who had answered "aye" to confirm he was the person summoned was told by the Sheriff that he must answer either "yes" or "no". When his name was read again and he was asked to confirm it, he answered "aye" again, and was imprisoned for 90 minutes for contempt of court
Contempt of court
Contempt of court is a court order which, in the context of a court trial or hearing, declares a person or organization to have disobeyed or been disrespectful of the court's authority...
. On his release he said "I genuinely thought I was answering him".
Both words are derived from adverbs in Old English (OE). Yes is derived from a compound of the OE adverb yea, which means surely, and so, and is thus surely so, while no comes from an OE adverb that means never. Whilst Modern English has a two-form system for affirmatives and negatives, Early Modern English
Early Modern English
Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English...
(EME) in fact had a four-form system, comprising the words yea, nay, yes, and no. This is exemplified by the following passage from Much Ado about Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....
:
Benedick's yea is the answer to a positively framed question. The answers to positively framed questions ("Will he go?") were yea and nay, whilst the answers to negatively framed questions ("Will he not go?") were yes and no. This subtle grammatical nicety of EME is recorded by Sir Thomas More
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor...
in his critique of William Tyndale
William Tyndale
William Tyndale was an English scholar and translator who became a leading figure in Protestant reformism towards the end of his life. He was influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus, who made the Greek New Testament available in Europe, and by Martin Luther...
's translation of the New Testament into EME, which was then quoted as an authority by later scholars:
In fact, More's exemplification of the rule actually contradicts his statement of what the rule is. This went unnoticed by scholars such as Horne Tooke, Robert Gordon Latham
Robert Gordon Latham
Robert Gordon Latham FRS was an ethnologist and philologist.Born at Billingborough, Lincolnshire, Latham studied philology in Scandinavia. He graduated from King's College, Cambridge in 1833, becoming a Fellow of King's...
, and Trench, and was first pointed out by George Perkins Marsh
George Perkins Marsh
George Perkins Marsh , an American diplomat and philologist, is considered by some to be America's first environmentalist, although "conservationist" would be more accurate...
in his Century Dictionary, where he corrects More's incorrect statement of the first rule, "No aunswereth the question framed by the affirmative.", to read nay. That even More got the rule wrong, even whilst himself dressing-down Tyndale for getting it wrong, is seen by scholars such as Furness as evidence that the distinction between these four words was "truth, too subtle a distinction for practice". Benedick's answer of yea is a correct application of the rule, but as observed by W. A. Wright "Shakespeare does not always observe this rule, and even in the earliest times the usage appears not to have been consistent". Furness notes that this is indeed the case in the following, where Hermia's answer should, in following the rule, have been yes:
Marsh himself found no evidence of a four-form system in Mœso-Gothic
Moesogoths
The Moesogoths were a branch of the Goths who settled in Moesia, a region north of Thrace within the Roman Empire. This branch from the Ostrogoths occurred due to religious reasons. The leader and hero of these people was Tilton the Victious, as he was called by the Romans, established a tribal...
, although he reported finding "traces" in Old English. He observed that in the Anglo-Saxon Gospels, positively-phrased questions are answered positively with gea (John 21:15,16) and negatively with ne (Luke 12:51; 13:5), nese (John 21:5; Matthew 13:29), and nic (John 18:17); whilst negatively phrased questions are answered positively with gyse (Matthew 17:25) and negatively with nâ (John 8:10).
Marsh calls this four-form system of EME a "needless subtlety". Tooke called it a "ridiculous distinction", with Marsh concluding that Tooke believed Thomas More to have simply made this rule up, and observing that Tooke is not alone in his disbelief of More. Marsh points out (having himself analyzed the works of John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe was an English Scholastic philosopher, theologian, lay preacher, translator, reformer and university teacher who was known as an early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church during the 14th century. His followers were known as Lollards, a somewhat rebellious movement, which preached...
, Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
, John Gower
John Gower
John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which...
, John Skelton
John Skelton
John Skelton, also known as John Shelton , possibly born in Diss, Norfolk, was an English poet.-Education:...
, and Robert of Gloucester
Robert of Gloucester (historian)
Robert of Gloucester wrote a chronicle of British, English, and Norman history sometime in the mid- or late-thirteenth century. The Chronicle survives in some 16 manuscripts, ranging in date from the early fourteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries, and was of considerable interest to contemporaries...
, and Piers Ploughman and Le Morte d'Arthur
Le Morte d'Arthur
Le Morte d'Arthur is a compilation by Sir Thomas Malory of Romance tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table...
to see where and how these words were used) that the distinction did exist, however, and was generally and fairly uniformly observed in EME from the time of Chaucer to the time of Tyndale. "yes" and "no" were reserved for answering negatively-phrased questions, whilst yea and nay served both as answers to positively-phrased questions and as normal intensifier
Intensifier
Intensifier is a linguistic term for a modifier that amplifies the meaning of the word it modifies. Examples are "very," "quite," "extremely," "highly," and "greatly." An intensifier is the opposite of a qualifier, a modifier that weakens the word modified: "fairly," "somewhat," "rather," "a...
s in responses to non-interrogative statements. But after the time of Tyndale, the four-form system was rapidly replaced by the modern two-form system.
Three form systems
Whilst English has a two-form system, and had a four-form system, several other languages have a three-form system. DanishDanish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, Icelandic
Icelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
all have three-form systems, with two affirmative words and one negative. Swedish and Danish have ja, jo, and nej. Norwegian has ja, jo, and nei. Icelandic has já, jú and nei. Hungarian has igen, de, and nem. German has ja, doch, and nein. French has oui, si, and non. In a three-form system the affirmative response to a positively-phrased question is the unmarked affirmative, the affirmative response to a negatively-phrased question is the marked
Markedness
Markedness is a specific kind of asymmetry relationship between elements of linguistic or conceptual structure. In a marked-unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one...
affirmative, and the negative response to both forms of question is the (single) negative. So, for example, in Norwegian the affirmative answer to "Snakker du norsk?" ("Do you speak Norwegian?") is "Ja.", and the affirmative answer to "Snakker du ikke norsk?" ("Don't you speak Norwegian?") is "Jo.", whilst the negative answer to both questions is "Nei.".
Swedish, and to some extent Danish and Norwegian, also has additional forms javisst and jovisst, analogous to ja and jo, to indicate a strong affirmative response. Swedish and Danish also have the forms joho and nehej, which both indicate stronger response than jo or nej. Jo can also be used as an emphatic contradiction of a negative statement.
Other languages with four-form systems
Like EME, the Romanian languageRomanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
has a four-form system. The affirmative and negative responses to positively-phrased questions are da and nu, respectively. But in responses to negatively-phrased questions they are prefixed with ba (i.e. ba da and ba nu). nu is also used as a negation adverb, infixed between subject and verb. Thus, for examples, the affirmative response to the negatively phrased question "N-ai plătit?" ("Didn't you pay?") is "Ba da." ("Yes."—i.e. "I did pay."), and the negative response to a positively-phrased question beginning "Se poate să …?" ("Is it possible to …?") is "Nu, nu se poate." ("No, it is not possible."—note the use of nu for both no and negation of the verb.)
Related words in other languages and translation problems
Bloomfield and Hockett observe that not all languages have special completive interjections. In PolishPolish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, for example, tak (thus, so) and nie (not) are adverbs. Russian
Russian 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...
has the adverbs да and нет and Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
does not generally answer yes-no questions with either adverbs or interjections but answers them with a repetition of the verb in the question, negating it if the answer is the negative. (This is an echo response.) The answer to "Tuletteko kaupungista?" ("Are you coming from town?") is the verb form itself, "Tulemme." ("We are coming."). Negative questions are answered similarly. Negative answers are just the negated verb form. The answer to "Tunnetteko herra Lehdon?" ("Do you know Mr Lehto?") is "En tunne" ("I don't know.") or simply "En." ("I don't."). However, Finnish does also have particle words for "yes": "Kyllä" (formal) and "joo" (colloquial, never used in writing). A yes-no question can be answered "yes" with either "kyllä" or "joo", which are not conjugated according to the person and plurality of the verb. "Ei", however, is always conjugated.
It is often said that Welsh
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...
has no words at all for yes and no. This is untrue. It has ie and nage. However, these are used only in specialized circumstances, and are but some of the many ways in Welsh of saying yes or no. As in Finnish, the main way to state yes or no, in answer to yes-no questions, is to echo the verb of the question. So the answers to "Ydy Ffred yn dod?" ("Is Ffred coming?") are either "Ydy." ("He is coming.") or "Nac ydy." ("He is not coming."). In general, the negative answer is the positive answer combined with nag. As in Finnish, this avoids the issue of what an unadorned yes means in response to a negative question. Whilst a yes response to the question "You don't beat your wife?" is ambiguous in English, the Welsh response ydw has no ambiguity. The same would apply for Finnish, where the question would be answered with en (I don't). For more information on yes and no answers to yes-no questions in Welsh, see Jones, listed in further reading.
Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
and other Gaelic languages do not have any words for "yes" or "no". Instead an echo response of the verb used to ask the question is used. Sometimes the verb used is "Tá" (to be). Example "An bhfuil sé ag teacht" (Is he coming). Answer: "Tá" (Is) or "Níl" (Is not). More frequently another verb will be used. Example "Ar chuala sé" (Did he hear). Answer "Chuala" (heard) or "Níor chuala" (Did not hear). Irish people frequently give echo answers in English as well. Example: "Did you hear?". Answer "I heard/I did". This also happens in Galician language
Galician language
Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
.
Latin has no single words for yes and no. Their functions as intensifier
Intensifier
Intensifier is a linguistic term for a modifier that amplifies the meaning of the word it modifies. Examples are "very," "quite," "extremely," "highly," and "greatly." An intensifier is the opposite of a qualifier, a modifier that weakens the word modified: "fairly," "somewhat," "rather," "a...
s and interjections are taken up by using the vocative case
Vocative case
The vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence...
. Their functions as word sentence responses to yes-no questions are taken up by sentence adverbs, single adverbs that are sentence modifiers and that also can be used as word sentences. There are several such adverbs which are classed as truth-value adverbs—including certe, fortasse, nimirum, plane, vero, etiam, sane, minime, and videlicet. They express the speaker's/writer's feelings about the truth value of a proposition. They, in conjunction with the negator non, are used as responses to yes-no questions. For examples:
Latin also employs echo responses.
So, too, does 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...
. In all dialects, yes-no questions are often posed in A-not-A form, and the replies to such questions are echo answer
Echo 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 that echo either A or not A. The closest equivalents to yes and no are to state "是" (shì; "It is the case.") and "不是" (búshì; "It is not the case."). (In Cantonese, the preceding are 係 hai6 and 唔係 m4 hai6, respectively.) When used as an interjection, No! is often said as 不要 (literally, "do not want" or "do not"). The now-infamous bootleg version of Star Wars Episode III, poorly translated from Chinese to English, translated Darth Vader's cry of "Noooooooo" (不要) as "Do not want"; this translation error became an internet meme
Internet meme
The term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.-Description:...
.
Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
does not have words for yes and no. The words "はい" (hai) and "いいえ" (iie) are mistaken by English speakers for equivalents to yes and no, but they actually signify agreement or disagreement with the proposition put by the question – i.e. "That's correct." or "That's incorrect."
Like the English contraction of OE yea so into yes, the words for yes and no in other languages originate from a process of devaluation and semantic erosion. The Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
strong affirmative persze was originally the Latin phrase per se intelligitur (it stands to reason), for example. German nein similarly is derived from the Old High German
Old High German
The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
ni ein, which means not a single one. (In Latin, non similarly devolved from noenum, which also means not a single.) The French oui was formerly oïl (after which Langue d'oïl is named) which in turn came from the Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
hoc ille, meaning this one (i.e. "it is this one").
These differences between languages make translation difficult. No two languages are isomorphic
Isomorphism
In abstract algebra, an isomorphism is a mapping between objects that shows a relationship between two properties or operations. If there exists an isomorphism between two structures, the two structures are said to be isomorphic. In a certain sense, isomorphic structures are...
, even at the elementary level of the words for yes and no. Translation from two-form to three-form systems is something that English-speaking schoolchildren learning French or German soon encounter. But the mapping is not even as simple as converting two forms into three. There are many idioms, such as reduplication (in French, German, and Italian) of affirmatives for emphasis (e.g. the German ja ja ja). Furthermore, the mappings are one-to-many in both directions. The German ja has no fewer than 13 English equivalents that vary according to context and usage (yes, yeah, and no when used as an answer; well, alright, so, and now, when used for segmentation; oh, ah, uh, and eh when used an interjection; and do you, will you, and their various inflections when used as a marker for tag question
Tag question
A question tag or tag question is a grammatical structure in which a declarative statement or an imperative is turned into a question by adding an interrogative fragment . For example, in the sentence "You're John, aren't you?", the statement "You're John" is turned into a question by the tag...
s) for example. Moreover, both ja and doch are frequently used as additional particle
German modal particle
In the German language, a modal particle is an uninflected word used mainly in spontaneous spoken language in colloquial registers. These words have a dual function: reflecting the mood or attitude of the speaker or narrator, and highlighting the sentence focus.The effect that a flavoring...
s for conveying nuanced meaning where in English no such particle exists. Straightforward, non-idiomatic, translations from German to English and then back to German can often result in the loss of all of the modal particles such as ja and doch from a text.
Translation from languages that have word systems to those that do not, such as Latin, is similarly problematic. As Calvert says, "[s]aying yes or no takes a little thought in Latin".