The Linguistics of Yes-No Questions

Justin Jin Woo Won, Laguna Hills HS, 11th

“Aren’t you going?” If you had just heard this question, you are most likely to answer, “Yes, I am going.” But if you are asked in Korean, “너 안가?” (“You are not going?”), then you are going to answer, “응, 안가” (“Yes, not going”). Yes-no questions—referred to as “polar questions” among linguists—is an interesting feature found in all languages. There is a great variety of ways of forming polar questions in languages and even a disparity in the usage of “yes” and “no,” as shown in the aforementioned example.

One of the many things that confuses Koreans when learning English is that when asked a negative question like the one above (“Aren’t you going?”), the response is the opposite of what one would say in Korean. As a response to “Aren’t you going?” a typical English speaker would say, “Yes, I’m going” or “No, I’m not going.” Thus, yes is always followed by an affirmative or positive (“I am going”), and no is always followed by negative (“I am not going”). However, in languages like Korean and Japanese, the reverse of English is true. “너 안가?” (“You not going?”) will get either “응, 안가” (Yes, I am not going) or “아니, 가” (No, I am going) as a response. Korean and Japanese focus on whether the responder agrees or disagrees with the questioner, whereas English and other European languages focus on whether the response is positive or negative. Fortunately, such a difference is only shown in the case in which a negative polar question is asked. All three languages, English, Japanese, and Korean, agree when asked a positive question (i.e. “Do you like coffee?” “커피 좋아해?”, for which one can answer, “Yes, I do,” “응, 좋아해”).

You might feel a little perplexed by the complexities of polar questions. It is understandable. And a few languages’ speakers have thought that “yes” and “no” are confusing concepts. So they came up with an unambiguous way of answering polar questions: not having the words for “yes” or “no” in the first place. You can state what you want and not use yes or no at all, as do Mandarin Chinese and Portuguese speakers. For example, when asked “ni xiang yao chi ma?” (Do you want to eat?), you would answer either “xiang yao” (I want to) or “bu xiang yao (I don’t want to). In Portuguese, “Você conhece o caminho que vai a São José?” (Do you know the way to San Jose?) would be answered with “Conheço” (I know).

Of course, languages employ both ways. When asked “가지 않을래?” (Do you not want to go?), the answers is usually either “갈래” (I want to go) or “안갈래” (I don’t want to go). Such is the case because answering with simply yes or no in this case is very ambiguous. English has a way of showing the responder’s agreement just like yes in Korean (“응”). It is the use of “yeah.” Though considered informal at times, “yeah” apparently has a different function from that of “yes.” Consider this example: “Are you not going?”—“No, I’m not,” “Yeah, I’m not.” Here, “yeah” is used to convey that the responder is agreeing with the questioner, which is similar to yes and no in Korean and Japanese.

There are countless languages in the world. With those languages there are many exotic differences among languages, one example of which is discussed above. How different languages are can be surprising sometimes, but it is true of all languages that each strives to clearly convey what a speaker intends to say.

2 Comments

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