yes and no

''Yes'' and ''no'', or word pairs with similar words, 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 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 don't 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 situationsbut 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 ' (I am) has no ambiguity.

The words ''yes'' and '' no'' are not easily classified into any of the eight conventional parts of speech. Sometimes classified as interjections, 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. Sentences consisting solely of one of these two words are classified as minor sentences.

Classification of English grammar

Although sometimes classified as interjections, these words do not express emotion or act as calls for attention; they are not adverbs because they do not qualify any verb, adjective, or adverb. They are sometimes classified as a part of speech in their own right: sentence words or word sentences.

This is the position of Otto Jespersen, who states that Yes' and 'No'... are to all intents and purposes sentences just as much as the most delicately balanced sentences ever uttered by Demosthenes or penned by Samuel Johnson."

Georg von der Gabelentz, Henry Sweet, and Philipp Wegener have all written on the subject of sentence words. Both Sweet and Wegener include ''yes'' and ''no'' in this category, with Sweet treating them separately from both imperatives and interjections, although Gabelentz does not.

Watts classifies ''yes'' and ''no'' as grammatical particles, in particular ''response particles''. He also notes their relationship to the interjections '' oh'' and '' ah'', which is that the interjections can precede ''yes'' and ''no'' but not follow them. ''Oh'' as an interjection expresses surprise, but in the combined forms ''oh yes'' and ''oh no'' merely acts as an intensifier; but ''ah'' in the combined forms ''ah yes'' and ''ah no'' retains its stand-alone meaning, of focusing upon the previous speaker's or writer's last statement. The forms ''*yes oh'', ''*yes ah'', ''*no oh'', and ''*no ah'' are grammatically ill-formed. Aijmer similarly categorizes the ''yes'' and ''no'' as ''response signals'' or ''reaction signals''.

Ameka classifies these two words in different ways according to the context. When used as back-channel items, he classifies them as interjections; but when they are used as the responses to a yes–no question, he classifies them as formulaic words. The distinction between an interjection and a formula is, in Ameka's view, that the former does not have an addressee (although it may be directed at a person), whereas the latter does. The ''yes'' or ''no'' in response to the question is addressed at the interrogator, whereas ''yes'' or ''no'' used as a back-channel item is a ''feedback usage'', an utterance that is said to oneself. However, Sorjonen criticizes this analysis as lacking empirical work on the other usages of these words, in addition to interjections and feedback uses.

Bloomfield and Hockett classify the words, when used to answer yes-no questions, as ''special completive interjections''. They classify sentences comprising solely one of these two words as minor sentences.

Sweet classifies the words in several ways. They are sentence-modifying adverbs, adverbs that act as modifiers to an entire sentence. They are also sentence words, when standing alone. They may, as question responses, also be absolute forms that correspond to what would otherwise be the ''not'' in a negated echo response. For example, a "No." in response to the question "Is he here?" is equivalent to the echo response "He is not here." Sweet observes that there is no correspondence with a simple ''yes'' in the latter situation, although the sentence-word "Certainly." provides an absolute form of an emphatic echo response "He is certainly here." Many other adverbs can also be used as sentence words in this way.

Unlike ''yes'', ''no'' can also be an adverb of degree, applying to adjectives solely in the comparative (e.g., ''no greater'', ''no sooner'', but not ''no soon'' or ''no soonest''), and an adjective when applied to nouns (e.g., "He is no fool." and Dyer's "No clouds, no vapours intervene.").

Grammarians of other languages have created further, similar, special classifications for these types of words. Tesnière classifies the French ''oui'' and ''non'' as ''phrasillons logiques'' (along with '' voici''). Fonagy observes that such a classification may be partly justified for the former two, but suggests that ''pragmatic holophrases'' is more appropriate.

The Early English four-form system

While Modern English has a ''two-form system'' of ''yes'' and ''no'' for affirmatives and negatives, earlier forms of English had a ''four-form system'', comprising the words ''yea'', '' nay'', ''yes'', and ''no''. ''Yes'' contradicts a negatively formulated question, ''No'' affirms it; ''Yea'' affirms a positively formulated question, ''Nay'' contradicts it.

*Will they not go? — Yes, they will.
*Will they not go? — No, they will not.
*Will they go? — Yea, they will.
*Will they go? — Nay, they will not.

This is illustrated by the following passage from Much Ado about Nothing: (editorial footnotes)

Benedick's answer of ''yea'' is a correct application of the rule, but as observed by W. A. Wright "Shakespeare does not always observe this rule, and even in the earliest times the usage appears not to have been consistent." Furness gives as an example the following, where Hermia's answer should, in following the rule, have been ''yes'':

This subtle grammatical feature of Early Modern English is recorded by Sir Thomas More in his critique of William Tyndale's translation of the New Testament into Early Modern English, which was then quoted as an authority by later scholars:

In fact, More's exemplification of the rule actually contradicts his statement of what the rule is. This went unnoticed by scholars such as Horne Tooke, Robert Gordon Latham, and Trench, and was first pointed out by George Perkins Marsh in his ''Century Dictionary'', where he corrects More's incorrect statement of the first rule, "''No'' aunswereth the question framed by the affirmative.", to read ''nay''. That even More got the rule wrong, even while himself dressing down Tyndale for getting it wrong, is seen by Furness as evidence that the four word system was "too subtle a distinction for practice".

Marsh found no evidence of a four-form system in Mœso-Gothic, although he reported finding "traces" in Old English. He observed that in the Anglo-Saxon Gospels,
*positively phrased questions are answered positively with '' gea'' (John 21:15,16, King James Version: "Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee" etc.)
*and negatively with '' ne'' (Luke 12:51, KJ: "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division"; 13:4,5, KJ: "Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."), '' nese'' (John 21:5 "Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No."; Matthew 13:28,29, KJ: "The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them."), and ''nic'' meaning "not I" (John 18:17, KJ: "Then saith the damsel that kept the door unto Peter, Art not thou also one of this man's disciples? He saith, I am not.");
*while negatively phrased questions are answered positively with '' gyse'' (Matthew 17:25, KJ: "they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute? He saith, Yes.")
*and negatively for example with '' nâ'', meaning "no one" (John 8:10,11, "he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord.").

Marsh calls this four-form system of Early Modern English a "needless subtlety". Tooke called it a "ridiculous distinction", with Marsh concluding that Tooke believed Thomas More to have simply made this rule up and observing that Tooke is not alone in his disbelief of More. Marsh, however, points out (having himself analyzed the works of John Wycliffe, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, John Skelton, and Robert of Gloucester, and '' Piers Plowman'' and ''Le Morte d'Arthur'') that the distinction both existed and was generally and fairly uniformly observed in Early Modern English from the time of Chaucer to the time of Tyndale. But after the time of Tyndale, the four-form system was rapidly replaced by the modern two-form system.

Three-form systems

Several languages have a ''three-form system'', with two affirmative words and one negative. In a three-form system, the affirmative response to a positively phrased question is the unmarked affirmative, the affirmative response to a negatively phrased question is the marked affirmative, and the negative response to both forms of question is the (single) negative. For example, in Norwegian the affirmative answer to "Snakker du norsk?" ("Do you speak Norwegian?") is "Ja", and the affirmative answer to "Snakker du ikke norsk?" ("Do you not speak Norwegian?") is "Jo", while the negative answer to ''both'' questions is "Nei".

Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Hungarian, German, Dutch, French and Malayalam all have three-form systems. Swedish and Danish have , , and . Norwegian has , , and . Icelandic has , , and . Faroese has , , and . Hungarian has , , and . German has , , and . Dutch has , , and . French has , , and . Malayalam has , and . Though, technically Malayalam is a multi-form system of Yes and No as can be seen from below, the former are the formal words for Yes and No.

Swedish, and to some extent Danish and Norwegian, also have additional forms '' javisst'' and '' jovisst'', analogous to ''ja'' and ''jo'', to indicate a strong affirmative response. Swedish (and Danish slang) also have the forms ''joho'' and ''nehej'', which both indicate stronger response than ''jo'' or ''nej''. ''Jo'' can also be used as an emphatic contradiction of a negative statement. And Malayalam has the additional forms , and which act like question words, question tags or to strengthen the affirmative or negative response, indicating stronger meaning than , and . The words , , , , , and work in the same ways. These words also sound more polite as they don't sound like curt when saying "No!" or "Yes!". means "it is there" and the word behaves as an affirmative response like . The usage of to simply mean "No" or "No way!", is informal and may be casual or sarcastic, while is the more formal way of saying "false", "incorrect" or that "it is not" and is a negative response for questions. The word has a stronger meaning than . is used to mean "OK" or "correct", with the opposite meaning "not OK" or "not correct". It is used to answer affirmatively to questions to confirm any action by the asker, but to answer negatively one says . and both mean to "want" and to "not want".

Other languages with four-form systems

Like Early Modern English, the Romanian language has a four-form system. The affirmative and negative responses to positively phrased questions are '' da'' and '' nu'', respectively. But in responses to negatively phrased questions they are prefixed with '' ba'' (i.e. ''ba da'' and ''ba nu''). ''nu'' is also used as a negation adverb, infixed between subject and verb. Thus, for example, the affirmative response to the negatively phrased question "N-ai plătit?" ("Didn't you pay?") is "Ba da." ("Yes."—i.e. "I did pay."), and the negative response to a positively phrased question beginning "Se poate să ...?" ("Is it possible to ...?") is "Nu, nu se poate." ("No, it is not possible."—note the use of ''nu'' for both ''no'' and negation of the verb.)

Related words in other languages and translation problems

Bloomfield and Hockett observe that not all languages have ''special completive interjections''.

Finnish

Finnish does not generally answer yes-no questions with either adverbs or interjections but answers them with a repetition of the verb in the question, negating it if the answer is the negative. (This is an echo response.) The answer to "Tuletteko kaupungista?" ("Are you coming from town?") is the verb form itself, "Tulemme." ("We are coming.") However, in spoken Finnish, a simple "Yes" answer is somewhat more common, "Joo."

Negative questions are answered similarly. Negative answers are just the negated verb form. The answer to "Tunnetteko herra Lehdon?" ("Do you know Mr Lehto?") is "En tunne" ("I don't know.") or simply "En." ("I don't."). However, Finnish also has particle words for "yes": "Kyllä" (formal) and "joo" (colloquial). A yes-no question can be answered "yes" with either "kyllä" or "joo", which are not conjugated according to the person and plurality of the verb. "Ei", however, is always conjugated and means "no".

Estonian

Estonian has a structure similar to Finnish, with both repetitions and interjections. means "yes". Unlike Finnish, the negation particle is always , regardless of person and plurality. ("am/are/is not") can be replaced by (a contraction of the ancient expression , meaning the same).

The word , cognate to Finnish , can be used to reply positively to a negative question: ("You don't speak Finnish?" "Yes, I do!") It can also be used to approve a positive statement: ("You (unexpectedly) came along!" "Yes I did.")

Latvian

Up until the 16th century Latvian did not have a word for "yes" and the common way of responding affirmatively to a question was by repeating the question's verb, just as in Finnish. The modern day was borrowed from Middle High German and first appeared in 16th-century religious texts, especially catechisms, in answers to questions about faith. At that time such works were usually translated from German by non-Latvians that had learned Latvian as a foreign language. By the 17th century, was being used by some Latvian speakers that lived near the cities, and more frequently when speaking to non-Latvians, but they would revert to agreeing by repeating the question verb when talking among themselves. By the 18th century the use of was still of low frequency, and in Northern Vidzeme the word was almost non-existent until the 18th and early 19th century. Only in the mid-19th century did really become usual everywhere.

Welsh

It is often assumed that Welsh has no words at all for ''yes'' and ''no''. It has and , and '' do'' and '' naddo''. However, these are used only in specialized circumstances and are some of the ways in Welsh of saying yes or no. ''Ie'' and ''nage'' are used to respond to sentences of simple identification, while ''do'' and ''naddo'' are used to respond to questions specifically in the past tense. As in Finnish, the main way to state yes or no, in answer to yes-no questions, is to echo the verb of the question. The answers to "'" ("Is Ffred coming?") are either "'" ("He is (coming).") or "'" ("He is not (coming)"). In general, the negative answer is the positive answer combined with . For more information on ''yes'' and ''no'' answers to yes-no questions in Welsh, see Jones, listed in further reading.

Goidelic languages

The Goidelic languages ( Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx) do not have words for ''yes'' or ''no'' at all. Instead, an echo response of the main verb used to ask the question is used. Sometimes, one of the words meaning "to be" (Irish ' or ', see Irish syntax § The forms meaning "to be"; Scottish Gaelic ' or ' see Scottish Gaelic grammar § verbs; Manx ' or ') is used. For example, the Irish question "'" ("Is he coming?") may be answered ''""'' ("Is") or ''""'' ("Is not"). More frequently, another verb will be used. For example, to respond to "'" ("Did he hear?"), "'" ("Heard") or "'" ("Did not hear") are used. Irish people frequently give echo answers in English as well, e.g. "Did you hear?" Answer "I heard/I did".

Latin

Latin has no single words for ''yes'' and ''no''. Their functions as word sentence responses to yes-no questions are taken up by ''sentence adverbs'', single adverbs that are sentence modifiers and also used as word sentences. There are several such adverbs classed as truth-value adverbs—including , , , , , , , , and (negative). They express the speaker's/writer's feelings about the truth value of a proposition. They, in conjunction with the negator , are used as responses to yes-no questions. For example:

Latin also employs echo responses.

Galician and Portuguese

These languages have words for ''yes'' and ''no'', namely and in Galician and and in Portuguese. However, answering a question with them is less idiomatic than answering with the verb in the proper conjugation.

Spanish

In Spanish, the words 'yes' and 'no' are unambiguously classified as adverbs: serving as answers to questions and also modifying verbs. The affirmative can replace the verb after a negation ( = ''I don't own a car, but he does'') or intensify it (''I don't believe he owns a car. / He does own one!'' = ). The word is the standard adverb placed next to a verb to negate it ( = ''I don't own a car''). Double negation is normal and valid in Spanish, and it is interpreted as reinforcing the negation ( = ''I own no car'').

Chinese

Speakers of Chinese use echo responses. In all Sinitic/Chinese languages, yes-no questions are often posed in A-not-A form, and the replies to such questions are echo answers that echo either ''A'' or ''not A''. In Mandarin Chinese, the closest equivalents to ''yes'' and ''no'' are to state "" (; ) and "" (; ). The phrase () may also be used for the interjection "no". Similarly, in Cantonese, the preceding are 係 ''hai6'' (lit: "is") and 唔係 (lit: "not is") ''m4 hai6'', respectively. One can also answer 冇錯 ''mou5 co3'' () for the affirmative, although there is no corresponding negative to this.

Japanese

Japanese lacks words for ''yes'' and ''no''. The words "" (''hai'') and "" (''iie'') are mistaken by English speakers for equivalents to ''yes'' and ''no'', but they actually signify agreement or disagreement with the proposition put by the question: "That's right." or "That's not right." For example: if asked, , answering with the affirmative "はい" would mean "Right, I am ''not'' going"; whereas in English, answering "yes" would be to contradict the negative question. Echo responses are not uncommon in Japanese.

Complications

These differences between languages make translation difficult. No two languages are isomorphic at the most elementary level of words for ''yes'' and ''no''. Translation from two-form to three-form systems are equivalent to what English-speaking school children learning French or German encounter. The mapping becomes complex when converting two-form to three-form systems. There are many idioms, such as reduplication (in French, German, and Italian) of affirmatives for emphasis (the German ).

The mappings are one-to-many in both directions. The German has no fewer than 13 English equivalents that vary according to context and usage (''yes'', ''yeah'', and ''no'' when used as an answer; ''well'', ''all right'', ''so'', and ''now'', when used for segmentation; ''oh'', ''ah'', ''uh'', and ''eh'' when used an interjection; and ''do you'', ''will you'', and their various inflections when used as a marker for tag questions) for example. Moreover, both and are frequently used as additional particles for conveying nuanced meaning where, in English, no such particle exists. Straightforward, non-idiomatic, translations from German to English and then back to German can often result in the loss of all of the modal particles such as and from a text.

Translation from languages that have word systems to those that do not, such as Latin, is similarly problematic. As Calvert says, "Saying yes or no takes a little thought in Latin".

Colloquial forms

Non-verbal

Linguist James R. Hurford notes that in many English dialects "there are colloquial equivalents of ''Yes'' and ''No'' made with nasal sounds interrupted by a voiceless, breathy ''h''-like interval (for Yes) or by a glottal stop (for No)" and that these interjections are transcribed into writing as ' or '. These forms are particularly useful for speakers who are at a given time unable to articulate the actual words ''yes'' and ''no''. The use of short vocalizations like ''uh-huh'', ''mm-hmm'', and ''yeah'' are examples of non-verbal communication, and in particular the practice of backchanneling.

Art historian Robert Farris Thompson has posited that ''mm-hmm'' may be a loanword from a West African language that entered the English vernacular from the speech of enslaved Africans; linguist Lev Michael, however, says that this proposed origin is implausible, and linguist Roslyn Burns states that the origin of the term is difficult to confirm.

''Aye'' and variants

The word ''aye'' () as a synonym for ''yes'' in response to a question dates to the 1570s. According to the '' Online Etymology Dictionary'', it is of unknown origin. It may derive from the word ''I'' (in the context of "I assent"); as an alteration of the Middle English ("yes"); or the adverb ''aye'' (meaning always "always, ever"), which comes from the Old Norse . Using ''aye'' to mean ''yes'' is archaic, having disappeared from most of the English-speaking world, but is notably still used by people from Scotland, Ulster, and the north of England."Yes (adverb)" in ''Oxford Thesaurus of English'' (3d ed.: Oxford University Press, 2009 (ed. Maurice Waite), p. 986.

In December 1993, a witness in a Scottish court who had answered "aye" to confirm he was the person summoned was told by a sheriff judge that he must answer either ''yes'' or ''no''. When his name was read again and he was asked to confirm it, he answered "aye" again, and was imprisoned for 90 minutes for contempt of court. On his release he said, "I genuinely thought I was answering him."

''Aye'' is also a common word in parliamentary procedure, where the phrase ''the ayes have it'' means that a motion has passed. In the House of Commons of the British Parliament, MPs vote orally by saying "aye" or "no" to indicate they approve or disapprove of the measure or piece of legislation. (In the House of Lords, by contrast, members say "content" or "not content" when voting).

The term has also historically been used in nautical usage, often phrased as "aye, aye, sir" duplicating the word "aye". Fowler's '' Dictionary of Modern English Usage'' (1926) explained that the nautical phrase was at that time usually written ''ay, ay, sir''.

The informal, affirmative phrase ''why-aye'' (also rendered ''whey-aye'' or ''way-eye'') is used in the dialect of northeast England,''Perspectives on Northern Englishes'' (eds. Sylvie Hancil & Joan C. Beal: Walter de Gruyter: 2017), table 4.2: "North-east features represented in the LL Corpus."Emilia Di Martino, ''Celebrity Accents and Public Identity Construction: Analyzing Geordie Stylizations'' (Routledge, 2019). most notably by Geordies.

Other

Other variants of "yes" include ''acha'' in informal Indian English and historically ''righto'' or ''righty-ho'' in upper-class British English, although these fell out of use during the early 20th century.

See also

* Affirmation and negation
* Thumb signal
*Translation
*Untranslatability

References

Further reading

* —Jones' analysis of how to answer questions with "yes" or "no" in the Welsh language, broken down into a typology of echo and non-echo responsives, polarity and truth-value responses, and numbers of forms
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Pdf.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yes And No
English grammar
English words
History of the English language
Parts of speech

br:Sí
de:Ja
es:Sí
es:No
eo:Jes
it:Sì
ja:はい
no:Ja
sk:Áno
yi:יא