<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Dear Nick,</div><div>Because of some urgent commitments I cannot at the moment answer your questions in detail. May I just mention that in Biblical Hebrew a negative answer can be given by the interjection(?) "lo", followed or not followed by formulating the correct statement, whereas a positive answer seems to require a "system B" form (à la latine), and no "yes" is available. In later Hebrew the word "ken" ("yes") will make a natural positive unswer, with or without a repetition.</div><div>More interesting are answers to negatively couched questions. In Amharic, the answer to "Don't you come?" will be "yes", ,meaning "you are right, I won't", or "no" = "you are wrong, I will come". One will keep in mind tha in french, the answer "oui" to such a question will mean "yes, I don't come" and the answer "non" may mean the same, viz. "no, I don't come"; answering such question by "si" will confirm the contrary of the negative expression questioned = "(but) I d o come".</div><div>Gideon.</div><div><br></div><br><div><div>On 2 Jan 2010, at 6:42, Nick Enfield wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div> <font face="Helvetica Neue Light"><span style="font-size:12pt">Happy new year everyone -<br> <br> Colleagues and I are comparing how polar questions are answered in various languages. There appear to be two basic types of strategy for answering a polar question such as 'Is John working today?': 1. with an 'interjection answer' such as "yes", "no", "of course", or 2. with a 'repetitional answer' (modifiable in various ways) such as "John is working today", "He's working", "He is". This suggests three possible types of system for a language:<br> <br> A. Interjection only: the language has no 'repetitional' type strategy, and it is only possible to answer by saying things like ‘Yes’.<br> <br> B. Repetitional only: the language has no 'interjection' type strategy, and it is only possible to answer by saying things like ‘He is’.<br> <br> C. Mixed. The language makes both strategies available (and the frequencies of use of one or the other alternative may vary across languages of this type)<br> <br> QUESTION. Does anybody know of any claims that there are languages with systems A or B? It does not seem possible that System A exists, since presumably all languages can provide speakers with a way to take the proposition that was coded in the question and simply assert it as a way of answering (i.e., repeat in declarative form for 'yes', or with negation for 'no'). There does, however, seem to be a common view that System B occurs. We have heard it said, for example, that Celtic languages like Welsh have no interjection strategy, but this is clearly not the case for Welsh itself, as shown by Bob Morris Jones in his book 'The Welsh Answering System'. In that book, Jones cites other languages as having repeat-only strategies (Gaelic, Breton) but he is not able to present sufficient data to establish that there is really no way to answer a polar question with an interjection type answer. (Note that under ‘interjection type answer’ we would include items like ‘yep’, ‘uh-huh’, ‘mm’, and nods of the head.)<br> <br> I would much appreciate any references to literature in which it is shown, or claimed, that a language has no means of answering a polar question with an interjection type strategy (functionally equivalent to 'yes' and 'no' in English), meaning that a 'repetitional' answer is the only means for answering a polar question.<br> <br> Many thanks in advance,<br> <br> Nick Enfield</span></font> </div> </blockquote></div><br></body></html>