Yes/no question

Ambiguities

There is an ambiguity in English as to whether certain questions actually are yes–no questions in the first place. Syntactically identical questions can be semantically different. It can be seen by considering the following ambiguous example:

• Did John play chess or checkers?

The question could be a yes–no question or could be an alternative question.

Possible ways to reply to this question:

• “Yes, John did” or “No, John did not”— The respondent assumed a straightforward yes–no question, whether John played either of the games
• “Chess” or “Checkers”— The respondent assumed it is asking the alternative question (which does not have a yes–no response) of which of the two game John played (with the presumption that he played one or the other), to which the answer is the name of the game.

Another such ambiguous question is "Would you like an apple or an orange?" to which the responses can be "An apple", "An orange", "Yes", and "No", depending from whether the question is seen as an alternative question or a yes–no question. (The "yes." answer involves a further ambiguity, discussed below.)

A related ambiguity is questions with the form of yes–no questions but intended not to be. They are a class of questions that encompass indirect speech acts. The question "Can you reach the mustard?" is an example. In form and semantics, it is a straightforward yes–no question, which can be answered either "Yes, I can" or "No, I cannot". There is, however, an indirect speech act (which Clark calls an elective construal) that can optionally be inferred from the question, namely "please pass the mustard". Such indirect speech acts flout Grice's maxim of manner. The inference on the part of the listener is optional, one that can legitimately remain untaken.

Clark describes one study where a researcher telephoned fifty restaurants around Palo Alto, California, asking without embellishment the question "Do you accept credit cards?" The three forms of reply given were:

• "Yes, we do." – The respondent assumed a straightforward yes–no question, taking the form of the question at face value.
• "Yes, we accept Mastercard and Visa." – The respondent assumed a straightforward yes–no question but provided additional information, either as explanation ("The answer is 'yes' because we accept these two.") or as anticipation or inference of a further request as to what credit cards are accepted.
• "We accept Mastercard and Visa." – The respondent not only took the question to be the indirect speech act but also assumed that the question was not a yes–no question, despite its form and so did not provide a yes–no answer at all.

Another part of the same study was the question "Do you have a price on a fifth of Jim Beam?" Out of 100 merchants, 40 answered "Yes". A non-response bias forced researchers to disregard the survey question asking tobacconists "Do you have Prince Albert?" as although the researchers' intent was to observe whether the merchants specified that they offered the tobacco brand as packaged in a can and/or a pouch, the merchants frequently hung up the phone, presumably because they believed themselves to be the victims of a popular prank call.

Answers

According to Grimes, the answer "yes" asserts a positive answer and the answer "no" asserts a negative answer, irrespective of the form of the question. However, simple "yes" or "no" word sentence answers to yes–no questions can be ambiguous in English. For example, a "yes" response to the question "You didn't commit the crime?" could mean either "yes, I didn't commit the crime" or "yes, I did commit the crime" depending from whether the respondent is replying with the truth-value of the situation or to the polarity used in the question. The ambiguity does not exist in languages that employ echo answers. In the Welsh language, for example, the response "ydw" ("I am") has no such ambiguity when it is used to reply to a question.

Other languages also do not follow the custom, given by Grimes, with respect to the answers "yes" and "no". In New Guinea Pidgin, Polish and Huichol, the answer given has the logical polarity implied by the form of the question.

• Positive form: "Bai Renjinal i ranewe, o nogat?" (“Will Reginald escape?”)
• Possible Answers: “Yes” (agreement, he will escape) or nogat (disagreement, he will not escape).

However in the negative form, the senses of the answers take the opposite polarity to English, following instead of the polarity of the question.

• Negative form: "Bai Rejinal i no ranewe, o nogat?" ("Won't Reginald escape?")
• Possible Answers: “Yes” (agreement, he will not escape) or nogat (disagreement, he will escape)

A further ambiguity with yes–no questions, in addition to that of polarity, is the ambiguity of whether an exclusive or inclusive disjunction is meant by the word "or", as it can represent either. Conventionally, in English yes–no questions the "or" represents an exclusive disjunction. However, as with the "Would you like an apple or an orange?" question mentioned earlier, to which one possible answer, as a yes–no question, is "yes.", yes–no questions can also be taken to be inclusive disjunctions. The informativeness of the "or" in the question is low, especially if the second alternative in the question is "something" or "things". The "exclusive" and "inclusive" can be determined often in spoken language (the speaker will often lower their pitch at the end of an "exclusive" question, as opposed to raising it at the end of an "inclusive" question), but it is a frequent source of humour for computer scientists and others familiar with Boolean logic, who will give responses such as "yes" to questions such as "Would you like chicken or roast beef for dinner?". However, the ambiguity is not confined to humour. The apple-or-orange question may be legitimately asking whether either is wanted, for example, and "Would you like an apple or something?" is indeed expecting either "yes" or "no" as a proper answer rather than the answer "Something" that an exclusive disjunction would be requesting.

This ambiguity does not exist only in English. It exists in West Greenlandic Kalaallisut, for example. The question Maniitsu-mi Nuum-mi=luunniit najugaqar-pa ("Does he live in Maniitsoq or Nuuk?") is ambiguous as to whether exclusive or inclusive disjunction is meant. Commonly, this is clarified either by intonation (if the question is spoken) or the inclusion of an explicit question-word such as sumi ("where").

Suggestibility

Yes–no questions are believed to carry some suggestibility load. For instance, in response to yes–no questions, children tend to display a compliance tendency: they comply with the structure of the question, negative or positive, by responding in the same way.

For example, if preschoolers are asked of a pen, "Is this for writing?", they will tend to respond "Yes, it is". But if they are asked, "Is this not made of wood?" they are more likely to say, "No, it is not".