Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Yes and no
Summary
Yes and no, or similar word pairs, are expressions of the affirmative and the negative, respectively, in several languages, including English. Some languages make a distinction between answers to affirmative versus negative questions and may have three-form or four-form systems. English originally used a four-form system up to and including Early Middle English and Modern English has reduced to a two-form system consisting of yes and no. It exists in many facets of communication, such as: eye blink communication, head movements, Morse Code, and sign language. Some languages, such as Latin, do not have yes-no word systems.
Answering a yes/no question with single words meaning 'yes' or 'no' is by no means universal. Probably about half the world's languages typically employ an echo response: repeating the verb in the question in an affirmative or a negative form. Some of these also have optional words for 'yes' and 'no', like Hungarian, Russian, and Portuguese. Others simply do not have designated yes/no words, like Welsh, Irish, Latin, Thai, and Chinese. Echo responses avoid the issue of what an unadorned yes means in response to a negative question. Yes and no can be used as a response to a variety of situations - but are better suited when asked simple questions. While a yes response to the question, "You don't like strawberries?" is ambiguous in English, the Welsh response ydw (I am) has no ambiguity.
The words yes and no are not easily classified into any of the conventional parts of speech. Sometimes they are classified as interjections, although they do not qualify as such, and they are not adverbs. They are sometimes classified as a part of speech in their own right, sentence words, or pro-sentences, although that category contains more than yes and no, and not all linguists include them in their lists of sentence words. Yes and no are usually considered particles. Sentences consisting solely of one of these two words are classified as minor sentences.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related concepts (4)
Yes–no question
In linguistics, a yes–no question, also known as a binary question, a polar question, or a general question, is a question whose expected answer is one of two choices, one that provides an affirmative answer to the question versus one that provides a negative answer to the question. Typically, in English, the choices are either "yes" or "no". Yes–no questions present an exclusive disjunction, namely a pair of alternatives of which only one is a felicitous answer.
Interrogative
An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is sick". Also, the additional question mark closing the statement assures that the reader is informed of the interrogative mood. Interrogative clauses may sometimes be embedded within a phrase, for example: "Paul knows who is sick", where the interrogative clause "who is sick" serves as complement of the embedding verb "know".
Question
A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammatical forms typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are interrogative in form but may not be considered bona fide questions, as they are not expected to be answered. Questions come in a number of varieties. Polar questions are those such as the English example "Is this a polar question?", which can be answered with "yes" or "no".