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

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday June 19 2015, @11:57PM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Friday June 19 2015, @11:57PM (#198498) Homepage

    Necessary pedantry incoming.

    The verb is "to do". The imperfective past negative form of "to do" is "did not do" or "didn't do". There's only one negation going on there. There's only one verb there, you can't negate both halves of one verb: "I did not un-run to the park".

    Personally, I don't think the negative indefinite pronoun/adjective ("none", "nothing", etc.) should exist, it's redundant and confusing.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2015, @01:00AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2015, @01:00AM (#198506)

    He said that you negate every *word* in the sentence.