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Proceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society

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Yes or no? The complex semantics

of a simple question

C

LIFF

G

ODDARD

University of New England, Australia

<cgoddard@metz.une.edu.au>

Es erstaunt mich nur, ‘ja’ und ‘nein’ nicht auf der Liste zu finden. Ich dachte, das

braucht man in jeder Sprache ‘It only surprised me not to find ‘yes’ and ‘no’ on the

list [of universal semantic primes]. I thought this was something one needed in any

language’ (Nordenstam 2001: 12)

1 . Introduction

This short paper investigates the semantics of yes/no questions, using the reductive paraphrase

methodology of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory (Wierzbicka 1996, Goddard and

Wierzbicka 2002). This topic may strike some people as an odd one. To judge from the

literature, linguists generally seem to think that there are no real problems with yes/no questions,

at least not compared with their much-studied cousins, the wh-questions. I will try to show that

the apparent simplicity of yes/no questions is illusory, and that yes/no questions can be

decomposed – both semantically and syntactically – into simpler structures.

I will also be asking how it is that such questions can presuppose or invite an answer in the form

of yes or no, which in turn means asking: What are the meanings of yes and no themselves?

Many people would assume that they must be universals (cf. the quotation from Swedish

philosopher Tore Nordenstam above), but this assumption is challenged by the existence of

multiple “yes words” and “no words” in some languages and by their non-existence in other

languages.

2 . The syntax of ‘not knowing’

Presumably all questions (except rhetorical ones) convey the impression that the speaker does

not know something and wishes to know it, but to get from this to a semantic paraphrase is not

as straightforward as it may seem. The difficulty is how to represent the way in which a yes/no

question is

about the status of a particular proposition, e.g. ‘Mary is at home’.

One way would be to use the semantic prime

KNOW

with an if-complement: ‘I don’t know if

––’. The illocutionary semantics of a yes/no question could then be approximately and partially

sketched, as in (1). The arrow (=>) indicates that the explication is intended only to be partial.

(1)

Is Mary at home? =>

I don’t know if Mary is at home

I want to know

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Proceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society

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It seems clear, however, that this kind of if-complement is not a semantically simple and

irreducible valency option of

KNOW

, but instead conceals some complex semantics of its own.

Compare (2a) and (2b). Example (2a) could be used regardless of whether or not the thought

that Mary might be at home had ever entered my head. Not so (2b). It portrays a more “active”

state of mind. It implies that it must have occurred to me that Mary might be at home.

(2a)

I didn’t know that Mary was at home.

(2b)

I didn’t know if Mary was at home.

I propose that the ‘don’t know if – ’ construction can be explicated as in (3), using the semantic

primes

THINK

and

MAYBE

,

as well as

KNOW

. The idea is that ‘don’t know if – ’ implies that the

subject thought of the possibility. In the explication, the

I THINK

depicts the “think of” aspect,

and the

MAYBE

clause represents the “possibility”.

(3)

I don’t know if she is at home =

I think maybe she is at home

I don’t know

This leads to the interim and partial explication for a yes/no question given in (4).

(4)

Is Mary at home? =>

I think maybe Mary’s at home

I don’t know

I want to know

3 . The schematic semantics for a “yes/no” response

Explication (4) is still deficient because it does not indicate in any way that such a question is

“inviting” an answer in the form of yes or no. Clearly, whatever yes and no mean, they are

generic or schematic in content. This suggests that explication (4) should be rephrased in such a

way that the invited response is about the “hypothetical situation” described by the question.

How can this be represented within natural semantic metalanguage, which cannot resort to a

complex and language-specific term such as ‘situation’? It is helpful to ask how this kind of

meaning could be talked about in ordinary colloquial usage. That is, in ordinary usage how

could one describe, in a general or schematic way, what someone who asks a yes/no question is

asking about? One possibility is as follows:

(5)

Ques

:

I think maybe Mary’s at home

I want to know if it is so (i.e. like this)

Ans :

It is/isn’t so (i.e. like this).

The questioner asks whether the situation is ‘like this’, supplying a specific description at the

same time, and the other person replies by saying that it either is or isn’t like this (i.e. so). In my

view, this phrasing is a vital clue to the underlying schematics of both the yes/no question and

the canonical responses yes and no themselves.

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Proceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society

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In current NSM thinking the predicative expression

LIKE THIS

is a simple semantic molecule

composed of two primes, but what is the status of ‘it’? In the current model (Goddard and

Wierzbicka 2002), the nearest prime would presumably be

SOMETHING

, and it is certainly the

case that many uses of English it can be analysed as meaning, essentially, ‘this thing’ (= this

something). However, this analysis is not viable for all uses of it. For example, in a sentence

like She said that Max did it, but I don’t believe it, the first it might be paraphrasable as ‘this

thing’, but this doesn’t work nearly as well for the second one. For these and other reasons, it

has recently been proposed that “situational it

” could be a distinct semantic prime (Goddard

2002). Such a prime would designate something which is anchored or taken-for-granted in the

speech context; for example, a previously mentioned proposition or discourse topic, perhaps

even some real-world phenomenon which is self-evident in the context

1

.

It is not possible here to discuss this issue adequately, but for the purposes of this paper I am

going to use “situational it

” as if it were a semantic prime. For interest, Table 1 gives a

schematic depiction of the relationships between the substantive and quasi-substantive primes,

showing how a hypothetical prime

IT

fits into the current picture.

Table 1: Substantive primes and related elements

Deictics

Categoricals

Specifics

Relationals

I/YOU

SOMEONE

(PERSON)

PEOPLE

KIND OF

BODY

IT

SOMETHING

(THING)

PART OF

WORDS

HERE

SOMEWHERE

(PLACE)

NOW

SOMETIME

(TIME)

Returning now to the basic schema for a yes/no question, I propose that this can be portrayed as

in (6), or, in a simpler formulation, as in (7). The questioner depicts him or herself as having a

certain possibility in mind, and as wanting to know if it is so. In answering yes or no, the

respondent is saying that it either is or isn’t so, i.e. ‘like this’.

1

It goes without saying that there are yet other uses of English it which are highly language-specific and which

could have no claim to candidature as a semantic prime. Conversely, in other languages the exponent of the

intended meaning could have a grammatical status quite different to that of English it. In Russian, for instance,

the obvious exponent is eto, the invariable neuter form of the word for ‘this’.

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Proceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society

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(6)

Ques

: Is Mary at home? =

I want to know something

I think maybe Mary’s at home

if it’s like this, I want you to say it’s like this

if it’s not like this, I want you to say it’s not like this

Ans1

: Yes = it is like this

Ans2

: No = it is not like this

The schema in (7) has the advantage of being simpler but there is room for uncertainty about the

final component, i.e. ‘I want you to say’. This sounds slightly odd in English (though still

acceptable, in my judgement), but it is perfectly alright in many other languages.

(7)

Is Mary at home? =

I want to know something

I think maybe it’s like this:

Mary’s at home

I don’t know

I want you to say

As a check on the above explication, one can ask how well it works for “negative questions”,

i.e. for questions with negative polarity such as Isn’t Mary at home? or Aren’t you coming? It

is well known that an odd property of the so-called “polarity-based” yes/no system of English is

that yes doesn’t work properly as an answer: to be clear, one has to reply Yes she is. Many

languages have a special, extra response word to affirm a question posed in the negative, e.g.

German doch, French si, Icelandic ju, cf. Sadock (1985: 190); and English once did too, in the

distinction between yea and yes.

Why is it so? Presumably because a question phrased in the negative conveys the impression

that the speaker previously held the expectation that the negative was correct. Once this aspect is

added to the explication, the oddness of a yes answer seems to follow naturally, because it is not

clear what is being affirmed.

(8)

Ques

: Isn’t Mary at home? =

I want to know something

I thought before that Mary is at home

if it’s like this, I want you to say it’s like this

if it’s not like this, I want you to say it’s not like this

Ans : ?Yes = it is like this

At this point, we have developed answers to the main questions addressed in this paper, i.e. we

have a semantic schema for English yes/no questions and we have shown how this connects

with a simple hypothesis about the meanings of yes and no as responses to such questions

2

.

2

This is not the end of the story of no. For example, if someone says Stop talking or Don’t forget your keys,

one can answer No or No, I won’t, and apparently here no = ‘I don’t want to do it’ (rather than ‘it’s not like this’).

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Proceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society

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4 . “Alternative questions” and whether-complements

The present analysis also has some light to shed on the relationship between ordinary yes/no

questions and so-called “alternative questions”, i.e. questions of the form Is Mary at home or

not?, and on the related issue of the semantics of whether-complements, e.g. He asked

whether Mary was at home. For reasons of space, the treatment must be highly compressed.

In the early generative literature it was assumed that ordinary yes/no questions were derived

from the same underlying structures as alternative questions. However, subsequent work

(especially Bolinger 1978) established that there are significant differences in usage and

meaning between ordinary yes/no questions and alternative questions, and, significantly, that

these differences correlate with the difference between two types of complement structure,

namely: ‘don’t know if – ’ vs. ‘don’t know whether – ’. That is to say, just as ordinary yes/no

questions can be aligned with the ‘don’t know if – ’ construction (as pointed out in section 2),

so alternative questions can be aligned with the ‘don’t know whether – ’ construction.

Two relevant observations about whether are as follows. First, whether “logically combine[s]

the conditional meaning of if with the disjunctive meaning of either... or

” (Quirk and

Greenbaum et al 1985: 750). A whether-complement, in other words, is much more “polarity

focussed” than an if-complement. (Notice that, unlike if, complementiser whether can be

immediately followed by the words or not; cf. I don’t know whether/*if or not she’s at

home.)

Second, syntactically (as well as etymologically) whether can be regarded as a wh-word. For

example, unlike if but like other wh-words, whether can take to-complements as well as finite

complements; cf. I don’t know whether/*if to go.

From a semantic point of view, the following observation of Bolinger’s (1978: 96) is very

pertinent.

“whether appears to imply something about laying hold of information. The speaker

has already taken the alternative possibilities under consideration and wants to make up

his mind about them.”

Bolinger here highlights, first, the “factual” orientation of whether-complements (and

alternative questions), and second, the idea that they present the addressee with a strict choice

between alternatives. These observations may serve to introduce the paired explications in (9)

and (10).

Significantly the positive counterpart of no in such contexts is not yes, but something like OK, sure, or alright

(though yes sounds alright in very asymmetrical power relationships – Yes sir!). Two alternative lines of analysis

would seem to present themselves. The first is that there are two “no’s” in English: no

1

‘it’s not like this’

(corresponding to yes), and no

2

‘I don’t want this’ (corresponding to OK, sure, etc.). Alternatively, one could

regard the meaning conveyed by no as simply semantic prime

NOT

– this being combined with either

LIKE THIS

or with

WANT

depending on context.

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(9)

I don’t know whether she is at home =

I think one of these two things is true

‘she’s at home’, ‘she’s not at home’

I don’t know which

(10)

Is she at home or not? =

I want to know something

I think one of these two things is true

‘she’s at home’, ‘she’s not at home’

I don’t know which

I want you to say one of these two things

From the point of view of NSM syntax, these explications are not yet fully resolved since they

still contain a “suspect” construction, in the form of the embedded question locution don’t know

which. But at least they show how whether can be linked with an overt wh-word, i.e. which.

Furthermore, it is notable that both which and whether are “definite” wh-words (Bolinger 1978:

99), in that they presuppose a response drawn from a restricted set.

The analysis also offers possibilities for accounting for facts about embedded questions with

verbs other than know, for instance, wonder, inquire, question, investigate, and so on; and in

particular for the fact that some verbs and some contexts prefer a complement of one kind or the

other, i.e. an if-complement or a whether-complement. It is impossible to tackle these issues

here, yet the following pair of explications can give some idea of the shape of the analysis (they

assume, of course, a certain lexical semantic analysis of the verb, in this case wonder).

(11) Max wondered if Mary was at home =

for some time Max thought like this:

maybe Mary’s at home

I don’t know

I want to know

(12) Max wondered whether Mary was at home =

for some time Max thought like this:

one of these two things is true

‘Mary’s at home’, ‘she’s not at home’

I don’t know which

I want to know

5 . Concluding remarks

In his review of speech-act distinctions in syntax, Sadock (1985: 178-9, 195) observes that it is

“not logically necessary” for a language to have yes/no questions, and comments:

“the effect of a yes–no question could be obtained by a declarative sentence meaning ‘I

want to know: X or not’ or by an imperative sentence meaning ‘Tell me: X or not’.”

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The analysis proposed in the present study also recognises that yes/no questions have a

schematic structure, but it differs markedly on the nature of the schema. Where Sadock’s

formulations hinge on the word or, which is not a lexical universal, my proposals hinge on the

semantic prime

MAYBE

, which empirical evidence suggests is a lexical universal (cf. Goddard

and Wierzbicka 1994, 2002).

The present study also elaborates the schematics of a yes/no question, first, by identifying the

putative prime “situational

IT

” as, in a sense, the topic of such a question, and second, by

highlighting the function of the semantic molecule

LIKE THIS

as a way of introducing its specific

content. We have also moved beyond Sadock in proposing meanings for yes and no

themselves, and explaining how these succinct responses can function as good answers.

Many unresolved issues remain. In addition to those already mentioned, there are typological

implications. It is well-known that in some languages one answers yes/no questions in a fashion

quite different to that of English, either: (a) by using ‘yes’ and ‘no’ words on the agree/disagree

principle, as Japanese and Chinese, or (b) by repeating the main predicate, with negation if

appropriate, as in Welsh and Finnish (the so-called “echo” system). Some languages have

different ways of asking polar questions, e.g. Chinese question-particle ma vs. ‘A-not-A’

constructions. From the point of view of the present study, such differences imply that polar

questions and responses can have significantly different meanings in different languages.

Acknowledgements

Important ideas presented in this study emerged in discussions with Anna Wierzbicka. I would

also like to thank Brett Baker and Zhengdao Ye for helpful discussions.

References

Bolinger, Dwight. 1978. Yes-no questions are not alternative questions. In H. Hiz (ed.),

Questions. Reidel: Dordrecht. 87-105.

Goddard, Cliff. 2002. A systematic table of the semantic elements. Paper presented at the

Symposium ‘Metalanguage, scripts and explications’. Australian National University,

Canberra. 18 August 2002. Ms.

Goddard, Cliff and Wierzbicka, Anna (eds). 1994. Semantic and Lexical Universals – Theory

and Empirical Findings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Goddard, Cliff and Wierzbicka, Anna (eds). 2002. Meaning and Universal Grammar –

Theory and Empirical Findings. [Two Volumes]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, et al. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the

English Language. London: Longman.

Nordenstam, Tore. 2001. Der Mensch ist in vielen Kulturen zu Hause [interview]. Humboldt

Kosmos 78, 11-13.

Sadock, Jerry and Zwicky, Arnold. 1985. Speech act distinctions in syntax. In T. Shopen (ed.)

Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol I. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press. 155-196.

Wierzbicka, Anna. 1996. Semantics: Primes and Universals. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.