Yes and no
Yes and no, or word pairs with a similar word, 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; thus they may have three-form or four-form systems instead. English originally used a four-form system up to and including Early Middle English but Modern English has reduced this to a two-form system consisting of just '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.
Some languages do not answer yesses with single words meaning 'yes' or 'no'. Welsh, Finnish and Chinese are among the languages that typically employ an echo response rather than using words for 'yes' and 'no', though such languages can also have words broadly similar to 'yes' and 'no'. Echo responses avoid the issue of what an unadorned yes means in response to a negative question. While a yes response to the question "You don't like strawberries?" is ambiguous in English, the Welsh response ydw has no ambiguity.
The words ' and ' are not easily classified into any of the eight conventional parts of speech. Although 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, word sentences, 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.
The differences among languages, the fact that in different languages the various words for yes and no have different parts of speech and different usages, and that some languages lack a 'yes-no' word system, makes idiomatic translation very difficult.
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 ' and ', 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 standalone 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 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, 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, and an adjective when applied to nouns.
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. 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, ', yes, and no. Yes contradicts a negatively formulated question, No affirms it; Yea affirms a positively formulated question, Nay contradicts it.This is illustrated by the following passage from Much Ado about Nothing:
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
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 negative. For example, in Norwegian the affirmative answer to "Snakker du norsk?" is "Ja", and the affirmative answer to "Snakker du ikke norsk?" 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 അതേ, ഉവ്വ് and ഇല്ല. 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 has additional forms ' and , analogous to ja and jo, to indicate a strong affirmative response. Swedish 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 അതേല്ലോ, ഉവ്വല്ലോ and ഇല്ലല്ലോ which act like question words, question tags or to strengthen the affirmative or negative response, indicating stronger meaning than അതേ, ഉവ്വ് and ഇല്ല. The words അല്ലേ, ആണല്ലോ, അല്ലല്ലോ, വേണല്ലോ, വേണ്ടല്ലോ, ഉണ്ടല്ലോ and ഇല്ലേ work in the same ways. These words also sound more polite as they don't sound like curt when saying "No!" or "Yes!". ഉണ്ട means "it is there" and the word behaves as an affirmative response like അതേ. The usage of ഏയ് to simply mean "No" or "No way!", is informal and may be casual or sarcastic, while അല്ല is the more formal way of saying "false", "incorrect" or that "it is not" and is a negative response for questions. The word അല്ലല്ല has a stronger meaning than അല്ല. ശരി is used to mean "OK" or "correct", with the opposite ശരിയല്ല 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 വേണ്ടാ. വേണം and വേണ്ട 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 ' and ', respectively. But in responses to negatively phrased questions they are prefixed with . 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?" is "Ba da.", and the negative response to a positively phrased question beginning "Se poate să...?" is "Nu, nu se poate."Related words in other languages and translation problems
Bloomfield and Hockett observe that not all languages have special completive interjections.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. The answer to "Tuletteko kaupungista?" is the verb form itself, "Tulemme." However, in spoken Finnish simple "Yes" answer is far more common, "Joo."Negative questions are answered similarly. Negative answers are just the negated verb form. The answer to "Tunnetteko herra Lehdon?" is "En tunne" or simply "En.". However, Finnish also has particle words for "yes": "Kyllä" and "joo". 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
has a structure similar to Finnish, with both repetitions and interjections. "Jah" means "yes". Unlike Finnish, the negation particle is always "ei", regardless of person and plurality. "Ei ole" can be replaced by "pole".The word "küll", cognate to Finnish "kyllä", can be used to reply positively to a negative question: "Kas sa ei räägi soome keelt?" "Räägin küll!" It can also be used to approve a positive statement: "Sa tulidki kaasa!" "Tulin küll."
Latvian
Up until the 16th century Latvian also didn't 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 "jā" was borrowed from Middle High German "ja" 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 "jā" 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 "jā" was still of low frequency, and in Northern Vidzeme the word was almost non-existent till the 18th and early 19th century. Only in the mid-19th century did "jā" really become usual everywhere.Welsh
It is often said falsely that Welsh has no words at all for yes and no. It has ' and '. However, these are used only in specialized circumstances and are but some of the many ways in Welsh of saying yes or no. 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. So the answers to "Ydy Ffred yn dod?" are either "Ydy" or "Nac ydy". 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].Galician and Portuguese
These languages have words for yes and no, namely si and non in Galician and sim and não in Portuguese. However, answering a question with them is considered less idiomatic than answering with the verb in the proper conjugation.Goidelic languages
The Goidelic languages 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" is used. For example, the Irish question "An bhfuil sé ag teacht?" may be answered "Tá" or "Níl". More frequently, another verb will be used. For example, to respond to "Ar chuala sé?", "Chuala" or "Níor chuala" are used. Irish people frequently give echo answers in English as well, e.g. "Did you hear?" Answer "I heard/I did".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 '. 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.
Chinese
Speakers of Chinese use echo responses as well. 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".Japanese
also lacks words for yes and no. The words "はい" and "いいえ" 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, Are you not going?, 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.Spanish
In Spanish, the words sí and no are unambiguously classified as adverbs: not only do they serve as answers to questions; they also modify verbs. The affirmative sí can replace the verb after a negation or intensify it. The word no is the standard adverb placed next to a verb to negate it. Double negation is normal and valid in Spanish, and it is interpreted as reinforcing the negation.Complications
These differences between languages make translation difficult. No two languages are isomorphic, even at the elementary level of words for yes and no. Translation from two-form to three-form systems is something that English-speaking schoolchildren learning French or German soon encounter. But the mapping is not even as simple as converting two forms into three. There are many idioms, such as reduplication of affirmatives for emphasis.Furthermore, the mappings are one-to-many in both directions. The German ja has no fewer than 13 English equivalents that vary according to context and usage for example. Moreover, both ja and doch 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 ja and doch 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
Nonverbal
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 or by a glottal stop " 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 nonverbal 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 and, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, is of unknown origin; it may derive as a variation of the word I ; as an alteration of the Middle English yai, or from the adverb aye, which derives from the Old Norse ei. Use of aye is an archaism in most of the English-speaking world but remains in use in Scottish and Northern English usage.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..
The term has also historically used in nautical usage, often phrased as "aye, aye, sir" duplicating the word "aye". Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage explained that the nautical phrase was at that time usually written ay, ay, sir.
The informal, affirmative phrase why-aye is used in dialect of North East England, including in Geordie speech.