Yes–no question

In linguistics, a yes–no question, formally known as a polar question, is a question whose expected answer is either "yes" or "no".

Description

Formally, yes-no questions present an exclusive disjunction -- a pair of alternatives of which only one is acceptable.

In English, such questions can be formed in both positive and negative forms (e.g. "Will you be here tomorrow?" and "Won't you be here tomorrow?").

Non-polar questions

Non-polar questions:

• Do not necessarily present a range of alternative answers
• May not restrict that range to two alternatives

Questions beginning with "which", for example, often presuppose a set of several alternatives, from which one is to be drawn.

See Five Ws.

See also

• Binary
• Boolean algebra
• Exclusive disjunction
• Five Ws
• Linguistics
• Non-polar question
• Polar question
• Question

External links

• Yes–no question @ Wikipedia