Question about answers

[Gideon Goldenberg]

Dear Nick,
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.
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".
Gideon.


On 2 Jan 2010, at 6:42, Nick Enfield wrote:

> Happy new year everyone -
>
> 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:
>
> A. Interjection only: the language has no 'repetitional' type  
> strategy, and it is only possible to answer by saying things like  
> ‘Yes’.
>
> B. Repetitional only: the language has no 'interjection' type  
> strategy, and it is only possible to answer by saying things like  
> ‘He is’.
>
> 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)
>
> 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.)
>
> 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.
>
> Many thanks in advance,
>
> Nick Enfield

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