The Syntax of Yes and No
Abstract
Abstract This is a study of the syntax of yes–no questions and answers to them in the languages of the world. Even very short answers like ‘yes’ and ‘no’ are claimed to be complete sentences. A typical answer consists of a focused polarity feature which is either spelled out as a particle or supported by a moved verb, with the rest of the sentence subject to ellipsis under identity with the question. These are the two main types of yes–no answers found among the languages of the world. How to answer negative questions is subject to cross-linguistic (and also intralinguistic) variation, where ‘yes’ in one language appears to correspond to ‘no’ in another. The variation is argued to depend on the syntax of negation and the syntax of questions. Data have been gathered from well over a hundred languages, but some are discussed in particular detail, as representatives of different types of question and answer systems, including English, Finnish, Swedish, Thai, and Chinese. An important claim is that all sentences have a polarity feature as head, which is unvalued in yes–no questions and assigned a value in the answer. A seemingly trivial phenomenon, how to say yes and no is shown to have wide-ranging consequences for linguistic theory and the understanding of linguistic variation.
Cite this
Anders Holmberg (2015). The Syntax of Yes and No. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198701859.001.0001
@book{anders2015the,
title = {The Syntax of Yes and No},
author = {Holmberg, Anders},
year = {2015},
doi = {10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198701859.001.0001}
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