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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 Saturday June 20 2015, @08:21PM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Saturday June 20 2015, @08:21PM (#198792) Homepage

    >No, the potential form is 開ける.
    Dead wrong.

    ドアを開ける。
    それを開けてください。

    開ける Ichidan verb, Transitive verb
    開ける
    1. to open (a door, etc.); to unwrap (e.g. parcel, package); to unlock

    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%96%8B%E3%81%91%E3%82%8B [ ‭wiktionary.org (Warning: Unicode in URL)⁩ ]

    So now I'm confident that your original Japanese is wrong.

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  • (Score: 2) by DarkMorph on Sunday June 21 2015, @03:29PM

    by DarkMorph (674) on Sunday June 21 2015, @03:29PM (#199093)
    And now I am confident you are inexperienced in the language, because if you continued to look at your dictionary, you would find that there are different readings for this word which would be ひらく and あける. Now if you want to tell me that ひらける is not the potential form of ひらくyou need to spend more time reviewing your lessons.

    Perhaps you should spend a little less time accusing those who speak the language with native speakers for a few years of having poor grammar, and more time learning things yourself.