Yes–no question
In linguistics, a yes–no question, formally known as a polar question or a general 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.
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.
How such questions are posed
Yes–no questions are formed in various ways in various languages. In English, a special word order is used to form yes–no questions. In the Greenlandic language, yes–no questions are formed with a special verb morphology. In 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.Latin
In Latin, the enclitic particle can be added to the emphatic word to turn a declarative statement into a yes–no question. It usually forms a neutral yes–no question, implying neither answer. For example:| Latin | Translation |
| Tu id veritus es. | "You feared that." |
| Tu-nē id veritus es? | "Did you fear that?" |
Yes–no questions are also formed in Latin using the word to imply that the interrogator thinks the answer to be the affirmative and with to imply that the interrogator thinks the answer to be the negative. For example:
Hindi
In Hindi, yes-no questions are added by using the question word क्या as a question-marker particle. This standard way is to place this particle either at the beginning or the end of a sentence but the grammar allows it to be placed at any place in between the sentence. However, there are situations when क्या cannot be used as a question-marker particle when placed at certain positions in a sentence. There are no fixed rules as to when it cannot be used as a particle but the way to determine when it can't be used that way is whenever क्या placed in a question creates an additional meaning owing to the fact that it also means "what" then it cannot be used as a question-marker particle but instead it is treated as the question word "what".| Questions | Literal | Translations | Remarks |
| तुम्हारा नाम राज है ? ' | your name Raj is? | Is your name Raj? | without the question marker, spoken with an rising intonation |
| क्या तुम्हारा नाम राज है ? ' | what your name Raj is? | Is your name Raj? | first standard way |
| तुम्हारा क्या नाम राज है ? ' | your what name Raj is? | Is your name Raj? | Grammatically, this sentence makes no sense when क्या is treated as the question word "what". Erroneously, a few natives might confuse this sentence having meaning of "तुम्हारा कौनसा नाम राज है? '" which does indeed make perfect grammatical sense as "Your which name is Raj?" |
| तुम्हारा नाम क्या राज है ? ' | your name what Raj is? | Is your name Raj? | The presence of the proper noun "Raj" prevents the question from having any additional meaning. Without the proper noun, the question would have meant "What is your name?" |
| तुम्हारा नाम राज क्या है ? ' | your name Raj what is? | What is your name Raj? | Here, the part क्या है part of the sentence forms a question on its own and results in changing the overall meaning of the question. Hence, क्या cannot be used as a question-particle when placed at this position in the sentence. |
| तुम्हारा नाम राज है क्या ? ' | your name Raj is what? | Is your name Raj? | second standard way |
| Questions | Literal | Translation | Remarks |
| मुझे वो दोगे ? | that give? | Will you give to me? | without the question marker, spoken with an rising intonation |
| क्या मुझे वो दोगे ? | what that give? | Will you give to me? | first standard way |
| मुझे क्या वो दोगे ? | what that give? | Will you give to me? | |
| मुझे वो क्या दोगे ? | that what give? | the क्या दोगे part forms an independent question and hence क्या cannot be interpreted as the question particle here. But, even when क्या is interpreted as "what", the overall question doesn't produce a practical meaning. Note: वो is often used as a filler word in Hindi and if here it is interpreted as a filler word, the closest functional meaning would be: "What will you give umm... to me?" | |
| मुझे वो दोगे क्या ? | that give what'''? | Will you give to me? | second standard way |
Chinese
In Chinese, yes–no questions typically take an A-not-A form. The resulting response is usually an echo response.Dutch
In many Germanic languages, yes-no questions are formed using subject inversion.Esperanto
In Esperanto, the word "ĉu" added to the beginning of a statement makes it a polar question.| Esperanto | Translation |
| Vi estas blua. | You are blue." |
| Ĉu vi estas blua? | Are you blue?" |
Ambiguities
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. It can be seen by considering the following ambiguous example:- Did John play chess or checkers?
A related ambiguity is questions with the form of yes–no questions but intended not to be. They 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". There is, however, an indirect speech act that can optionally be inferred from the question, namely "please pass the mustard". Such indirect speech acts flout Grice's maxim of manner. 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:
- "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 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 did not provide a yes–no answer at all.
Answers
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. However, 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 didn't commit the crime?" could mean either "yes, I didn't commit the crime" or "yes, I did commit the crime" depending from whether the respondent is replying with the truth-value of the situation or to the polarity used in the question. The ambiguity does not exist in languages that employ echo answers. In the Welsh language, for example, the response "ydw" has no such ambiguity when it is used to reply 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, Polish 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" or "". Phrased negatively, however, as "Bai Rejinal i no ranewe, o nogat?" the senses of the answers take the opposite polarity to English, following instead the polarity of the question. An answer 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 "", as it can represent either. Conventionally, in English yes–no questions the "or" represents an exclusive disjunction. However, 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". The "exclusive" and "inclusive" can be determined often in spoken language, but it is a frequent source of humour for computer scientists 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?". However, 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-mi Nuum-mi=luunniit najugaqar-pa" is ambiguous as to whether exclusive or inclusive disjunction is meant. Commonly, this is clarified either by intonation or the inclusion of an explicit question-word such as "sumi".
Suggestibility
Yes–no questions are believed to carry some suggestibility load. For instance, in response to yes-no questions, children tend to display a compliance tendency: they comply with the structure of the question, negative or positive, by responding in the same way.For example, if preschoolers are asked, "Is this book big?", they will tend to respond "Yes, it is". But if they are asked, "Is this book not big?" they are more likely to say, "No, it is not".