A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information . Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives , which are the grammatical forms, typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions , for instance, are interrogative in form but may not be considered bona fide questions, as they are not expected to be answered.
80-551: Questions come in a number of varieties. For instance; Polar questions are those such as the English example "Is this a polar question?", which can be answered with "yes" or "no" . Alternative questions such as "Is this a polar question, or an alternative question?" present a list of possibilities to choose from. Open questions such as "What kind of question is this?" allow many possible resolutions. Questions are widely studied in linguistics and philosophy of language . In
160-481: A complex question . Consider a statement and several questions related to it. As compared with: Unlike (B), questions (C) and (D) incorporate a presupposition that somebody killed the cat. Question (C) indicates speaker's commitment to the truth of the statement that somebody killed the cat, but no commitment as to whether John did it or did not. In languages written in Latin , Cyrillic or certain other scripts,
240-426: A polar question , or general question ) asks whether some statement is true. They can, in principle be answered by a "yes" or "no" (or similar words or expressions in other languages). Examples include "Do you take sugar?", "Should they be believed?" and "Am I the loneliest person in the world?" An alternative question presents two or more discrete choices as possible answers in an assumption that only one of them
320-429: A question mark at the end of a sentence identifies questions in writing. As with intonation, this feature is not restricted to sentences having the grammatical form of questions – it may also indicate a sentence's pragmatic function. In Spanish an additional inverted mark is placed at the beginning: ¿Cómo está usted? "How are you?". An uncommon variant of the question mark is the interrobang (‽), which combines
400-455: A rising declarative is a sentence which is syntactically declarative but is understood as a question by the use of a rising intonation. For example, "You're not using this?" On the other hand, there are English dialects (Southern Californian English, New Zealand English) in which rising declaratives (the " uptalk ") do not constitute questions. However it is established that in English there
480-470: A "yes or no" question with single words meaning yes or no is by no means universal. About half the world's languages typically employ an echo response : repeating the verb in the question in an affirmative or a negative form. Some of these also have optional words for yes and no , like Hungarian , Russian , and Portuguese . Others simply do not have designated yes and no words, like Welsh , Irish , Latin , Thai , and Chinese . Echo responses avoid
560-595: A broad range of alternative answers. For example, questions beginning with "who", involve a set of several alternatives, from which one is to be drawn; in this respect, they are open-ended questions . In contrast, yes–no questions are closed-ended questions , as they only permit one of two answers, namely "yes" or "no". Yes–no questions take many forms cross-linguistically. Many languages mark them with word order or verb morphology. Others use question particles or question intonation . These strategies are often mixed and matched from language to language. In Esperanto ,
640-484: A car. / He does own one! = No creo que él tenga coche. / ¡ Sí lo tiene! ). The word no is the standard adverb placed next to a verb to negate it ( Yo no tengo coche = I don't own a car ). Double negation is normal and valid in Spanish, and it is interpreted as reinforcing the negation ( No tengo ningún coche = I own no car ). In Nepali , there is no one word for 'yes' and 'no' as it depends upon
720-522: A closed interrogative clause, which uses an interrogative word such as when , who , or what . These are also called wh -words, and for this reason open questions may also be called wh -questions. Questions may be marked by some combination of word order, morphology , interrogative words, and intonation . Where languages have one or more clause type characteristically used to form questions, they are called interrogative clauses. Open and closed questions are generally distinguished grammatically, with
800-501: A foreign language. By the 17th century, jā was being used by some Latvian speakers that lived near the cities, and more frequently when speaking to non-Latvians, but they would revert to agreeing by repeating the question verb when talking among themselves. By the 18th century the use of jā was still of low frequency, and in Northern Vidzeme the word was almost non-existent until the 18th and early 19th century. Only in
880-489: A lyke difference is there betwene these two adverbs ye and yes . For if the question bee framed unto Tindall by the affirmative in thys fashion. If an heretique falsely translate the New Testament into Englishe, to make his false heresyes seem the word of Godde, be his bokes worthy to be burned ? To this questyon asked in thys wyse, yf he will aunswere true Englishe, he must aunswere ye and not yes . But now if
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#1732758235477960-448: A number of uses of questions where the speaker does not seek or expect an answer (perhaps because the answer is implied or obvious), such as: Loaded questions (a special case of complex questions ), such as "Have you stopped beating your wife?" may be used as a joke or to embarrass an audience, because any answer a person could give would imply more information than he was willing to affirm. The main semantic classification of questions
1040-460: A pair of alternatives of which only one is a felicitous answer. In English, such questions can be formed in both positive and negative forms: Yes–no questions are in contrast with non-polar wh-questions . The latter are also called content questions, and are formed with the five Ws plus an H ( "who", "what", "where", "when", "why", "how"). Rather than restricting the range of possible answers to two alternatives, content questions are compatible with
1120-410: 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 sentences ever uttered by Demosthenes or penned by Samuel Johnson ." Georg von der Gabelentz , Henry Sweet , and Philipp Wegener have all written on
1200-431: A question with them is less idiomatic than answering with the verb in the proper conjugation. In Spanish , the words sí 'yes' and no 'no' are unambiguously classified as adverbs: serving as answers to questions and also modifying verbs. The affirmative sí can replace the verb after a negation ( Yo no tengo coche, pero él sí = I don't own a car, but he does ) or intensify it ( I don't believe he owns
1280-506: A simple "Yes" answer is somewhat more common, Joo. 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 also has particle words for "yes": Kyllä (formal) and joo (colloquial). A yes–no question can be answered "yes" with either kyllä or joo , which are not conjugated according to
1360-590: A strong affirmative response. Swedish (and Danish and Norwegian slang) 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. Malayalam has the additional forms അതേല്ലോ , ഉവ്വല്ലോ and ഇല്ലല്ലോ which act like question words, question tags or to strengthen the affirmative or negative response, indicating stronger meaning than അതേ , ഉവ്വ് and ഇല്ല . The words അല്ലേ , ആണല്ലോ , അല്ലല്ലോ , വേണല്ലോ , വേണ്ടല്ലോ , ഉണ്ടല്ലോ and ഇല്ലേ work in
1440-678: A stronger meaning than അല്ല . ശരി is used to mean "OK" or "correct", with the opposite ശരിയല്ല meaning "not OK" or "not correct". It is used to answer affirmatively to questions to confirm any action by the asker, but to answer negatively one says വേണ്ടാ . വേണം and വേണ്ട both mean to "want" and to "not want". Like Early Modern English, the Romanian language 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
1520-631: A synonym for yes in response to a question dates to the 1570s. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary , it is of unknown origin. It may derive from the word I (in the context of "I assent"); as an alteration of the Middle English yai ("yes"); or the adverb aye (meaning always "always, ever"), which comes from the Old Norse ei . Using aye to mean yes is archaic , having disappeared from most of
1600-470: A typical ("information") question in that the characteristic response is a directive rather than a declarative statement. For example: Questions may also be used as the basis for a number of indirect speech acts. For example, the imperative sentence "Pass the salt." can be reformulated (somewhat more politely) as: Which has the form of an interrogative, but the illocutionary force of a directive. The term rhetorical question may be colloquially applied to
1680-428: A voiceless, breathy h -like interval (for Yes) or by a glottal stop (for No)" and that these interjections are transcribed into writing as uh-huh or mm-hmm . These forms are particularly useful for speakers who are at a given time unable to articulate the actual words yes and no . The use of short vocalizations like uh-huh , mm-hmm , and yeah are examples of non-verbal communication , and in particular
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#17327582354771760-477: Is a distinction between assertive rising declaratives and inquisitive rising declaratives, distinguished by their prosody . Questions may be phrased as a request for confirmation for a statement the interrogator already believes to be true. A tag question is a polar question formed by the addition of an interrogative fragment (the "tag") to a (typically declarative) clause. For example: This form may incorporate speaker's presupposition when it constitutes
1840-636: Is according to the set of logically possible answers that they admit. An open question, such as "What is your name?", allows indefinitely many possible answers. A closed question admits a finite number of possible answers. Closed questions may be further subdivided into yes–no questions (such as "Are you hungry?") and alternative questions (such as "Do you want jam or marmalade?"). The distinction between these classes tends to be grammaticalized. In English, open and closed interrogatives are distinct clause types characteristically associated with open and closed questions, respectively. A yes–no question (also called
1920-437: Is also used as a negation adverb, infixed between subject and verb. Thus, for example, 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
2000-458: Is more appropriate. While Modern English has a two-form system of yes and no for affirmatives and negatives, earlier forms of English had a four-form system , comprising the words yea , nay , yes , and no . Yes contradicts a negatively formulated question, No affirms it; Yea affirms a positively formulated question, Nay contradicts it. This is illustrated by the following passage from Much Ado about Nothing : Claudio: Can
2080-468: 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
2160-484: Is not alone in his disbelief of More. Marsh, however, points out (having himself analyzed the works of John Wycliffe , Geoffrey Chaucer , John Gower , John Skelton , and Robert of Gloucester , and Piers Plowman and Le Morte d'Arthur ) that the distinction both existed and was generally and fairly uniformly observed in Early Modern English from the time of Chaucer to the time of Tyndale. But after
2240-515: 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
2320-510: Is one of a small number of languages which use word order. Another example is French: Cross-linguistically, the most common method of marking a polar question is with an interrogative particle , such as the Japanese か ka , Mandarin 吗 ma and Polish czy . Other languages use verbal morphology, such as the -n verbal postfix in the Tunica language . Of the languages examined in
2400-690: Is seen by Furness as evidence that the four word system was "too subtle a distinction for practice". Marsh 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, Marsh calls this four-form system of Early Modern English 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
2480-496: Is this. No aunswereth the question framed by the affirmative. As for ensample if a manne should aske Tindall himselfe: ys an heretike meete to translate Holy Scripture into Englishe ? Lo to thys question if he will aunswere trew Englishe, he must aunswere nay and not no . But and if the question be asked hym thus lo: is not an heretike mete to translate Holy Scripture into Englishe ? To this question if he will aunswere trewe Englishe, he must aunswere no and not nay . And
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2560-419: Is true. For example: The canonical expected answer to such a question would be either "England", "Ireland", or "Wales". Such an alternative question presupposes that the addressee supports one of these three teams. The addressee may cancel this presupposition with an answer like "None of them". In English, alternative questions are not syntactically distinguished from yes–no questions. Depending on context,
2640-504: Is used in the dialect of northeast England , most notably by Geordies . In New England English , chiefly in Maine , ayuh is used; also variants such as eyah , ayeh or ayup . It is believed to be derived from either the nautical or Scottish use of aye . Other variants of "yes" include acha in informal Indian English and historically righto or righty-ho in upper-class British English , although these fell out of use during
2720-402: Is your name?") will satisfy all three definitions, their overlap is not complete. For example "I would like to know your name." satisfies the pragmatic definition, but not the semantic or syntactic ones. Such mismatches of form and function are called indirect speech acts . The principal use of questions is to elicit information from the person being addressed by indicating the information which
2800-541: The World Atlas of Language Structures , only one, Atatláhuca–San Miguel Mixtec , was found to have no distinction between declaratives and polar questions. Most languages have an intonational pattern which is characteristic of questions (often involving a raised pitch at the end, as in English). In some languages, such as Italian , intonation is the sole distinction. In some languages, such as English, or Russian,
2880-638: The English-speaking world, but is notably still used by people from parts of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Northern England in the UK, and in other parts of Ulster in Ireland. In December 1993, a witness in a court in Stirlingshire , Scotland, answered "aye" to confirm he was the person summoned, but was told by a sheriff judge that he must answer either yes or no . When his name
2960-475: The [i] responses are answers in the Cambridge sense. The responses in [ii] avoid committing to a yes or no answer. The responses in [iii] all implicate an answer of no , but are not logically equivalent to no . (For example, in [iiib], the respondent can cancel the implicature by adding a statement like: "Fortunately, she packed everything up early.") Along similar lines, Belnap and Steel (1976) define
3040-589: The affirmative and the negative , respectively, in several languages, including English . Some languages make a distinction between answers to affirmative versus negative questions and may have three-form or four-form systems. English originally used a four-form system up to and including Early Middle English . Modern English uses a two-form system consisting of yes and no . It exists in many facets of communication, such as: eye blink communication, head movements, Morse code , and sign language. Some languages, such as Latin, do not have yes-no word systems. Answering
3120-533: The affirmative answer to "Snakker du norsk?" ("Do you speak Norwegian?") is "Ja", and the affirmative answer to "Snakker du ikke norsk?" ("Do you not speak Norwegian?") is "Jo", while the negative answer to both questions is "Nei". Danish , Swedish , Norwegian , Icelandic , Faroese , Hungarian , German , Dutch , French and Malayalam all have three-form systems. Swedish, and to some extent Danish and Norwegian, also have additional forms javisst and jovisst , analogous to ja and jo , to indicate
3200-417: The beginning of the sentence, a phenomenon known as wh-fronting . In other languages, the interrogative appears in the same position as it would in a corresponding declarative sentence ( in situ ). A question may include multiple variables as in: Different languages may use different mechanisms to distinguish polar ("yes-no") questions from declarative statements (in addition to the question mark ). English
3280-478: 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 stand-alone 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 . Felix Ameka classifies these two words in different ways according to
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3360-441: The concept of a direct answer : A direct answer to a given question is a piece of language that completely, but just completely, answers the question...What is crucial is that it be effectively decidable whether a piece of language is a direct answer to a specific question... To each clear question there corresponds a set of statements which are directly responsive. ... A direct answer must provide an unarguably final resolution of
3440-458: The 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
3520-748: The conventional parts of speech . Sometimes they are classified as interjections . They are sometimes classified as a part of speech in their own right, sentence words , or pro-sentences , although that category contains more than yes and no , and not all linguists include them in their lists of sentence words. Yes and no are usually considered adverbs in dictionaries, though some uses qualify as nouns. Sentences consisting solely of one of these two words are classified as minor sentences . Although sometimes classified as interjections , these words do not express emotion or act as calls for attention; they are not adverbs because they do not qualify any verb, adjective, or adverb. They are sometimes classified as
3600-478: The early 20th century. Several languages have a three-form system , with two affirmative words and one negative. 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. For example, in Norwegian
3680-1223: The finite verb. Yes–no questions optionally co-occur with the wh-word क्या ( kyā ) [PQP – polar question particle]. The presence of the polar particle क्या ( kyā ) does not make the characteristic prosody optional. क्या kyā what. PQP राज-ने rāj-ne raj: MASC . SG . ERG उमा-को umā-ko uma: FEM . SG . DAT किताब kitāb book. FEM . SG . NOM दी↑ dī↑ give: PRF . 3SG . FEM क्या राज-ने उमा-को किताब दी↑ kyā rāj-ne umā-ko kitāb dī↑ what.PQP raj:MASC.SG.ERG uma:FEM.SG.DAT book.FEM.SG.NOM give:PRF.3SG.FEM 'Did Raj give a/the book to Uma?' *क्या *kyā what. PQP राज-ने rāj-ne raj: MASC . SG . ERG उमा-को umā-ko uma: FEM . SG . DAT किताब kitāb book. FEM . SG . NOM दी↓ dī↓ give: PRF . 3SG . FEM *क्या राज-ने उमा-को किताब दी↓ *kyā rāj-ne umā-ko kitāb dī↓ what.PQP raj:MASC.SG.ERG uma:FEM.SG.DAT book.FEM.SG.NOM give:PRF.3SG.FEM intendedː 'Did Raj give a/the book to Uma?' राज-ने rāj-ne raj: MASC . SG . ERG उमा-को umā-ko uma: FEM . SG . DAT Yes and no Yes and no , or similar word pairs, are expressions of
3760-402: The former identified by the use of interrogative words . In English , German , French and various other (mostly European) languages, both forms of interrogative are subject to an inversion of word order between verb and subject. In English, the inversion is limited to auxiliary verbs , which sometimes necessitates the addition of the auxiliary do , as in: Open questions are formed by
3840-506: The function of the question mark and the exclamation mark . The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language distinguishes between an answer (being a member of the set of logically possible answers, as delineated in § Semantic classification ) and a response (any statement made by the addressee in reply to the question). For example, the following are all possible responses to the question "Is Alice ready to leave?" Only
3920-485: The issue of what an unadorned yes means in response to a negative question. Yes and no can be used as a response to a variety of situations – but are better suited in response to simple questions. While a yes response to the question "You don't like strawberries?" is ambiguous in English, the Welsh response ydw (I am) has no ambiguity. The words yes and no are not easily classified into any of
4000-580: The level of semantics , a question is defined by its ability to establish a set of logically possible answers. At the level of pragmatics , a question is an illocutionary category of speech act which seeks to obtain information from the addressee. At the level of syntax , the interrogative is a type of clause which is characteristically associated with questions, and defined by certain grammatical rules (such as subject–auxiliary inversion in English) which vary by language. Some authors conflate these definitions. While prototypical questions (such as "What
4080-530: The measure or piece of legislation. (In the House of Lords , by contrast, members say "content" or "not content" when voting). The term has also historically been used in nautical usage, often phrased as "aye, aye, sir" duplicating the word "aye". Fowler 's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) explained that the nautical phrase was at that time usually written ay, ay, sir . The informal, affirmative phrase why-aye (also rendered whey-aye or way-eye )
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#17327582354774160-484: The mid-19th century did jā really become usual everywhere. It is often assumed that Welsh has no words at all for yes and no . It has ie and nage , and do and naddo . However, these are used only in specialized circumstances and are some of the many ways in Welsh of saying yes or no. Ie and nage are used to respond to sentences of simple identification, while do and naddo are used to respond to questions specifically in
4240-858: The most elementary level of words for yes and no . Translation from two-form to three-form systems are equivalent to what English-speaking school children learning French or German encounter. The mapping becomes complex when converting two-form to three-form systems. There are many idioms, such as reduplication (in French, German, and Italian) of affirmatives for emphasis (the Dutch and German ja ja ja ). 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 , all right , 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
4320-992: The past tense. 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. 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 . For more information on yes and no answers to yes–no questions in Welsh, see Jones, listed in further reading . Latin has no single words for yes and no . Their functions as word sentence responses to yes–no questions are taken up by sentence adverbs , single adverbs that are sentence modifiers and also used as word sentences. There are several such adverbs classed as truth-value adverbs—including certe , fortasse , nimirum , plane , vero , etiam , sane , videlicet , and minime (negative). They express
4400-567: The person and plurality of the verb. Ei , however, is always conjugated and means "no". Up until the 16th century Latvian did not have a word for "yes" and the common way of responding affirmatively to a question was by repeating the question's verb, just as in Finnish. The modern day jā was borrowed from Middle High German ja and first appeared in 16th-century religious texts, especially catechisms , in answers to questions about faith. At that time such works were usually translated from German by non-Latvians that had learned Latvian as
4480-429: The practice of backchanneling . Art historian Robert Farris Thompson has posited that mm-hmm may be a loanword from a West African language that entered the English vernacular from the speech of enslaved Africans ; linguist Lev Michael, however, says that this proposed origin is implausible, and linguist Roslyn Burns states that the origin of the term is difficult to confirm. The word aye ( / aɪ / ) as
4560-454: The preceding are 係 hai6 (lit: "is") and 唔係 (lit: "not is") m4 hai6 , respectively. One can also answer 冇錯 mou5 co3 ( lit. ' "not wrong" ' ) for the affirmative, although there is no corresponding negative to this. Japanese lacks 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
4640-519: The proposition put by the question: "That's right." or "That's not right." For example: if asked, Are you not going? ( 行かないのですか? , ikanai no desu ka? ) , answering with the affirmative "はい" would mean "Right, I am not going"; whereas in English, answering "yes" would be to contradict the negative question. Echo responses are typical in Japanese. These differences between languages make translation difficult. No two languages are isomorphic at
4720-545: The question be asked him thus lo; by the negative. If an heretike falsely translate the Newe Testament into Englishe to make his false heresyee seme the word of God, be not hys bokes well worthy to be burned ? To thys question in thys fashion framed if he will aunswere trewe Englishe he may not aunswere ye but he must answere yes , and say yes marry be they, bothe the translation and the translatour, and al that wyll hold wyth them. In fact, More's exemplification of
4800-540: 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 these two words as minor sentences . Sweet classifies
4880-462: The question. Polar question In linguistics , a yes–no question , also known as a binary question , a polar question , or a general question , is a question whose expected answer is one of two choices, one that provides an affirmative answer to the question versus one that provides a negative answer to the question. Typically, in English, the choices are either "yes" or "no" . Yes–no questions present an exclusive disjunction , namely
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#17327582354774960-561: The replies to such questions are echo answers that echo either A or not A . In Standard Mandarin Chinese , the closest equivalents to yes and no are to state " 是 " ( shì ; lit. ' "is" ' ) and " 不是 " ( búshì ; lit. ' "not is" ' ). The phrase 不要 ( búyào ; '(I) do not want') may also be used for the interjection "no", and 嗯 ( ǹg ) may be used for "yes". Similarly, in Cantonese ,
5040-472: 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 while himself dressing down Tyndale for getting it wrong,
5120-412: The rule, have been yes : Demetrius: Do not you thinke, The Duke was heere, and bid vs follow him? Hermia: Yea, and my Father. This subtle grammatical feature of Early Modern English is recorded by Sir Thomas More in his critique of William Tyndale 's translation of the New Testament into Early Modern English, which was then quoted as an authority by later scholars: I would not here note by
5200-455: The same question may have either interpretation: In speech, these are distinguishable by intonation , i.e., the question is interpreted as an alternative question when uttered with a rising contour on "butter" and a falling contour on "margarine". An open question (also called a variable question , non-polar question , or special question ) admits indefinitely many possible answers. For example: In English, these are typically embodied in
5280-422: The same ways. These words are considered more polite than a curt "No!" or "Yes!". ഉണ്ട means "it is there" and the word behaves as an affirmative response like അതേ . The usage of ഏയ് to simply mean "No" or "No way!" is informal and may be casual or sarcastic, while അല്ല is the more formal way of saying "false", "incorrect" or that "it is not" and is a negative response for questions. The word അല്ലല്ല has
5360-411: The speaker (or writer) desires. A slight variant is the display question , where the addressee is asked to produce information which is already known to the speaker. For example, a teacher or game show host might ask "What is the capital of Australia?" to test the knowledge of a student or contestant. A direction question is one that seeks an instruction rather than factual information. It differs from
5440-605: 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 example: "Quid enim diceres? Damnatum? Certe non." ("For what could you say? That I had been condemned? Assuredly not.") Latin also employs echo responses. These languages have words for yes and no , namely si and non in Galician and sim and não in Portuguese . However, answering
5520-433: The subfield of pragmatics , questions are regarded as illocutionary acts which raise an issue to be resolved in discourse . In approaches to formal semantics such as alternative semantics or inquisitive semantics , questions are regarded as the denotations of interrogatives, and are typically identified as sets of the propositions which answer them. Linguistically, a question may be defined on three levels. At
5600-504: The subject of sentence words. 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 particles , 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
5680-508: The time of Tyndale, the four-form system was rapidly replaced by the modern two-form system. The Oxford English Dictionary says the four-form system "was usually considered to be... proper..." until about 1600, with citations from Old English (mostly for yes and yea ) and without any indication that the system had not yet started then. Linguist James R. Hurford notes that in many English dialects "there are colloquial equivalents of Yes and No made with nasal sounds interrupted by
5760-421: The use of interrogative words such as, in English, when , what , or which . These stand in as variables representing the unknown information being sought. They may also combine with other words to form interrogative phrases, such as which shoes in: In many languages, including English and most other European languages, the interrogative phrase must (with certain exceptions such as echo questions ) appear at
5840-593: The verb being asked, for instance "तिमीले खाना खायौँ?" (timīle khānā khāyau?; lit. ' "You food ate?" ' ) would be answered by "खाएँ" (khāe˜; lit. ' "ate" ' ), which is the verb "to eat" conjugated for the past tense first person singular. In certain contexts, the word "नाई" (nāī) can be used to deny something that is stated, for instance politely passing up an offer. Speakers of Chinese use echo responses. In all Sinitic/Chinese languages , yes–no questions are often posed in A-not-A form, and
5920-424: The verb used in the question. The words most commonly translated as equivalents are 'हो' (ho; lit. ' "is" ' ) and 'होइन' (hoina; lit. ' "not is" ' ) are in fact the affirmative and negative forms of the same verb 'हो' (ho; lit. ' "is" ' ) and hence is only used when the question asked contains said verb. In other contexts, one must repeat the affirmative or negative forms of
6000-401: The verb.) 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.") However, in spoken Finnish,
6080-458: The way that Tyndale here translateth no for nay , for it is but a trifle and mistaking of the Englishe worde : saving that ye shoulde see that he whych in two so plain Englishe wordes, and so common as in naye and no can not tell when he should take the one and when the tother, is not for translating into Englishe a man very mete. For the use of these two wordes in aunswering a question
6160-441: The word "ĉu" added to the beginning of a statement makes it a polar question. In Germanic languages, yes–no questions are marked by word order. The following Dutch example shows how questions can be formed using subject inversion. In Hindi - Urdu ( Hindustani ), yes–no questions have rising intonation on the verbal complex, whereas declaratives generally have falling intonation. Unlike English , they do not involve inversion of
6240-406: 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
6320-443: The world buie such a iewell? [buy such a jewel] Benedick: Yea, and a case to put it into, but speake you this with a sad brow? 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 gives as an example the following, where Hermia's answer should, in following
6400-536: 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." Aye is also a common word in parliamentary procedure , where the phrase the ayes have it means that a motion has passed. In the House of Commons of the British Parliament , MPs vote orally by saying "aye" or "no" to indicate they approve or disapprove of
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