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What Don't You Understand About Yes and No?

posted by cmn32480 on Friday June 19 2015, @02:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the black-and-white-and-grey-all-over dept.

AnonTechie writes:

The words 'yes' and 'no' may seem like two of the easiest expressions to understand in any language, but their actual behaviour and interpretation are surprisingly difficult to pin down. In a paper published in the scholarly journal Language, two linguists examine the workings of 'yes' and 'no' and show that understanding them leads to new insights concerning the understanding of questions and statements more generally.

Floris Roelofsen (University of Amsterdam) and Donka F. Farkas (UC -- Santa Cruz) provide a comprehensive account of 'polarity particles', as these words are called, across languages, and explain the intricate pattern of their distribution. For example, "Yes, it is" and "No, it isn't" are acceptable answers to the question "Is the door open or is it not open?," but not to "Is the door open or is it closed?." Furthermore, the intonation used when pronouncing a sentence can affect whether 'yes' or 'no' are appropriate responses to it.

The original article came from Science Daily, but was also covered by phys.org.

The abstract (full study available to subscribers only) can be found at the Project Muse page from Johns Hopkins University.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @02:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @02:48PM (#198252)

    "Right... HEY! Where are you going??"

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @07:48AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @07:48AM (#199318)

    Kinda reminds me of the Turku dialect (of Finnish) way of replying to a question with "juuei" (yesno). It is used when somebody asks e.g. We're not going to the beach? Of course the logic is that it's first agreeing (yes you're right) with the person who asks and then affirming the negative (no, we're not going there). ;)

    And we get a lot of answers like that around here (although since it's such a Turku cliché people try to avoid it somewhat these days) because a Turku person likes to ask in a somewhat funny negative way "Eihän tämä bussi mene Ruissaloon?" (This bus doesn't go to Ruissalo, right?) when he really means that does this bus go there and whe he thinks it probably does...

    Language, it's a funny thing.