Conducive yes-no questions in English

WOLFRAM BUBLITZ

Abstract

There is a prevailing uncertainty with respect to the assessment of the notion of the 'expected answer'
to a conducive yes-no question. In order to clarify this notion the rather complex interrelationships
between the speaker's old and new assumptions, the form of the question and the answer are discussed
at some length. The analysis of different types of negative (and positive) yes-no question leads to the
distinction between (a) the answer which the speaker expects the hearer to give and which he either
does or does not desire and (b) what is called the expectable answer which the question itself points to.
No precise statements may be made as to the expected answer. What is decisive for the prediction of
the expectable answer to a conducive yes-no question is the (polarity of the) speaker's assumption that
led to the question, with which the hearer is expected to agree. There is no direct relationship between
the expectable answer to a conducive yes-no question and the polarity of the sentence form. Of the two
possible answers the expectable answer is the agreeing answer and according to the type of question
and the polarity of the assumption expressed this means either yes or no. To shed some light on the
relation between conduciveness and negation two proposals are mentioned in the final paragraph,
both of which look upon negative conducive yes-no questions as kinds of so-called indirect speech
acts.

1. In this paper I am concerned mainly with negative yes-no questions such as in example (1) and only
marginally with affirmative yes-no questions as in (2):1

Linguistics 19 (1981), 851-870. 0024-3949/81/0019-0851 $2.00

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© Mouton Publishers
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By asking a question the speaker is communicating not only what he knows but also what he does not
know. In (1) and (2), though, the speaker's lack of knowledge appears to be reduced to a minimum,
namely, to one disjunct of the alternative 'It is the case that X — or — it is not the case that X'. This
proves to be a complete list of the possible answers to a yes-no question (though not to a wh-question),
viz. affirmation and negation of the questioned sentence, as Conrad (1978: 38) points out. But although
(1) and (2) are of the same type (viz. yes-no question) they differ in one essential aspect: with the
question in (1) the speaker allows or rather invites the hearer to draw certain conclusions concerning
the underlying speaker assumptions and expectations. Up to the time of A's utterance which
immediately preceded his question, В in (1) had assumed that A was on the same committee as Dave
Cole. Negation and intonation (note the fall plus rise) reflect both his doubt as to the tenability of his
original assumption and his tendency to adopt the opposite assumption. This suggests the conclusion
that В is in all probability expecting a negative answer, which is then in fact given by A. The question
in (2), on the other hand, does not display similar speaker assumptions; that is why questions as in (2)
have usually been referred to as NEUTRAL yes-no questions. They are characterised by the fact that
the set of structurally possible answers is identical to the set of expected answers. 2 If this identity is not
given, in other words, if the speaker indicates that he considers either the affirmative or the negative
answer as more probable, the question is not neutral but conducive or biased, oriented towards one of
two possible responses. It is a characteristic feature of questions often overlooked that the speaker by
asking is not only able to cause the hearer to take the floor and react in a certain way, e.g. to answer —
this is common for other kinds of speech acts as well — but that in addition (and similar to directives)
he is also exerting his influence as to the CONTENT of the hearer's response. This, however, is
restricted to conducive and most commonly to negative conducive questions as in (1).
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Intuitively, NEGATION and CONDUCIVENESS seem to be two completely different properties. As
a rule, it presents no problems to judge from the form of the utterance if it is negative or not. On the
other hand, the hearer has to infer from the form of the question and the circumstances of its utterance
if it is conducive or not. Negation is a grammatical feature ('grammatical' used in its narrow sense),
conduciveness a pragmatic feature. Conduciveness is not a necessary property of negative questions;
there are affirmative questions that are conducive and negative questions that appear to be not
conducive. In what follows, the relation between negation and conduciveness in questions will be
considered. To get any results it is essential to clarify the notion of EXPECTED ANSWER (which is
not as easily determined as the set of linguistically possible answers to a question). In doing so, I will
try to answer the question whether the polarity of the answer always complies with the polarity of the
preceding conducive yes-no question, as is sometimes assumed and is supported by considering the
example in (1), or whether there are not rather more complex interrelationships between answer,
speaker's assumptions and expectations, and the form of the question. I will restrict myself to dealing
with questions in yes-no question form (and not, say, in declarative sentence form); moreover, all those
verbal phenomena that are in a similar or equal manner responsible for the interpretation of a yes-no
question as a conducive question displaying the speaker's expectation of a certain answer, have been
disregarded in this paper.3

2. Interpreting a negative yes-no question, one has to take into consideration (in addition to those
conditions valid for all types of question, cf. Searle, 1969: 66) the speaker's ORIGINAL
ASSUMPTION, his NEW ASSUMPTION, the circumstances having effected the CHANGE from the
original to the new assumption, and the FORM of the utterance. I am mainly concerned with the
POLARITIES of the speaker's assumptions and of the sentence form. Underlying conducive yes-no
questions is a specific positive or negative assumption concerning the existence and the nature of the
particular event or state which has been called into question. The speaker may have reflected the event
or state. For example, from a certain incident he may reach a conclusion which, as a tacit assumption,
he then takes as a prerequisite for an utterance to follow. Thus, there can be no doubt that in (1) the
speaker В had been aware of the fact that A is on the same committee as Dave Cole is on. But it is
equally possible that a certain state or fact is being assumed and taken for granted without prior
reflection and which is latent up to the moment the intervening occurrence takes place. In this case, the
assumption is based on a general premise which is naturally accepted in the socio-cultural language
community, and
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which is also valid for the particular case under consideration. Assumptions as to what is normal and
expected in those circumstances in which the speech event is embedded are crucial for the use of a
considerable number of other verbal (and, incidentally, non-verbal) phenomena (e.g. various modal
particles in German, cf. Bublitz, 1978). It is taken for granted, for instance, that normally one sells milk
in a dairy. This, exactly, is the assumption underlying the question, 'Don't you sell milk?' following a
remark by the shop assistant indicating that the assumption may not hold true in this case. I make use of
the ordinary, informal term assumption, which is based on individual as well as general norms of
expectation and statements of experience, reminiscent of the way the term pragmatic presupposition is
widely used in linguistics. But, judging by Stalnaker's (1970; 1973) influential definition, pragmatic
presuppositions may be used in a more restricted sense to refer to those speaker assumptions that
belong to the shared common knowledge of the discourse participants (or otherwise to the. pragmatic
universe of discourse as defined by Kempson, 1975: 167). I prefer the term assumption, though, using it
in a more general sense to include not only general norms but also individual assumptions that the
speaker does not believe are generally known. These are the assumptions that frequently underlie
conducive yes-no questions.
One may draw certain conclusions from the fact that the speaker chooses the assumed event or state
as the object of his question at all. There must have been an incident or some kind of evidence which
has not changed the speaker's beliefs about the world in general but which has caused doubt as to the
feasibility of the assumption and which therefore has given rise to the opposing assumption, which the
speaker believes to be possibly or certainly true. From this ensues the distinction between the old and
the new assumption, which, as a matter of fact, are not two essentially different assumptions; rather,
what we are dealing with are two sides, namely the two opposing polarities, of the one assumption. But
for analytical reasons which help to clarify the processes involved that lead to the production of
different kinds of conducive questions I prefer to talk of TWO underlying assumptions. (Both terms,
old and new assumption, have been used by Quirk et al, 1974: 389 ff.)
The circumstances causing the change from the old to the new assumption are also of considerable
importance for the decision to use a negative yes-no question. What is important in this connection is
the EXTENT to which an event can cause the speaker to be aware of his assumption for the first time
and to doubt its feasibility. The weaker this influence on the speaker is the more likely it is that he will
formulate his question with the polarity of the original assumption. If he is still
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convinced as to the validity of his old assumption, he may frequently use a declarative sentence. This
functions as a question which is indicated by some kind of tentation, as in (3):4

These are no longer information-seeking questions demanding the hearer to agree to the truth of the
proposition or to contradict it, but rather confirmation-seeking questions; the speaker wants to ascertain
that the proposition (presupposed as true or false) is known, familiar and present to the hearer's mind.
In addition to added then or tag questions as in (3), intonation and distribution of stress may be varied.
When it is to express these functions, it is no accident that the declarative sentence form is preferred to
the interrogative sentence form. The grammatical inversion found in interrogative sentences is more
closely connected with the question function than rising intonation or, for instance, the adding of then.
Utterances of this form are usually interpreted as information-seeking questions by the hearer. This
means that it is assumed entirely on the strength of the interrogative sentence form that the speaker
regards as possible either of the alternatives that are linguistically permitted by his yes-no question. A
declarative sentence, on the other hand, is by nature, or put differently, without context, 'constative'.
The alternative assumption, which is contrary to the assumption actually expressed in the utterance, is
disregarded, thereby, rendering its realisation as an answer difficult if not downright impossible. Apart
from rising intonation, even falling intonation may be encountered in this type of declarative sentence,
e.g. in (4):

As far as one can discern, there seem to be no syntactic or prosodic grounds, but only pragmatic
ones, for making the hearer understand that he is requested to answer, i.e. to agree.
Underlying the speech act is the new assumption which is effective in place of the original
assumption or in combination with it, at the time of speaking. As a rule, both assumptions together
influence the speaker's choice of a certain question form. But it does occur that the new
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assumption replaces the old assumption which is then completely dismissed. A case such as this is
usually triggered off by circumstances which are obvious and indisputable, so that in general asking a
question is unnecessary. Here, too, the form of the yes-no interrogative sentence does not correspond to
its function of gaining information concerning the truth of the proposition. Instead, what is again
expressed is a request to confirm the proposition, in order to set up or ascertain a state of agreement
between speaker and hearer. This is necessary for the discourse at that point in time. In the above case,
one either finds negative yes-no questions that function as exclamations (as in (5)), or declarative
sentences with tentations (e.g. rising intonation as in (6)), that function as exclamations as well:

The surprise exhibited in both exclamations is a result of the discrepancy between the speaker's
expectations and the actual occurrence. This indicates that in these cases, as well, a change from the
old, possibly non-reflected assumption to the new assumption takes place. Typically, for exclamations,
such as those in (5), it holds that the assumptions do not concern the event or state itself (i.e. its content
or truth-value etc.), but the extent and degree of its change or modification. In this paper, I have
nothing more to say on this usage of yes-no interrogative sentences.5

3. As a rule, in conducive yes-no questions, the affirmative polarity of the old assumption stands in
contrast to the negative polarity of both the new assumption and the form of the sentence. This
constellation is typical for a conducive negative yes-no question; it may be called its NORMAL case as
it is observed in (1) and in (7):
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From their context, it is plain that the polarity of the utterance form and of the old assumption differ
from one another. For example, in (7) В pauses after the first mention of the word Time and continues
by making precise his meaning using question intonation: Time magazine. When A does not react even
then (i.e. in the following pause) В chooses to ask a conducive question. There is no doubt that
originally В had categorised A as among those persons who obtain their information from this weekly.
Before turning to special cases of negative yes-no questions, I will talk about the expected answers to
negative questions as in (1) and (7). Upon asking a number of informants, one consistently receives the
reply that the speaker of this kind of question expects the hearer to give a negative answer, e.g. no, as is
indeed given in (1) and (7). This suggests that the polarity of the expected answer is chosen in
accordance with the polarity of the interrogative sentence; in other words, that with a negative |
conducive question the speaker expresses the expectation of a negative V answer. But this is not always
the case. For example, when informants are presented with negative conducive yes-no questions of the
following kind, which also display a discrepancy between an affirmative old and a negative new
assumption, their assessment of the expected answer is not as unanimous as in the case of (1) and (7):

The informant considering these (context-free) questions (8) and (9) deduces a certain preference
which he thinks must be mirrored in the kind of expected answer. Thus, there is marked tendency to
assume that in cases like (8) and (9) a positive answer is expected, e.g. oh yes, 1 did after (8). This
tendency originates from mingling two, from the point of view of the speaker, quite distinct kinds of
answer: the EXPECTED and the DESIRED (or preferred or hoped-for) answer. The conclusion that
desired answer and expected answer are taken to be identical is rather irritating.6 But, of course, the
answer which the speaker expects either may or may not be the answer he prefers.
I believe it is probably due to this fact that Pope (1975) avoids talking of the expectation of a certain
answer which is expressed in a negative yes-no question. What a conducive question displays is solely
the speaker's bias which agrees with his supposition, i.e. his OLD (!) assumption (Pope, 1975: 59). Pope
explicitly states the fact that it is not possible to decide which of the two alternative answers the speaker
of the following conducive yes-no
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question really EXPECTS to receive: 'Weren't you at the scene of the crime at 10:00 on the night of the
murder?' (Pope, 1975: 59). In Pope's (1975: 59) words, 'it is hard to say which answer the speaker is
really expecting. But because of the speaker's original belief [ = the supposition: you were at the
scene ...; W.B.], the question is definitely biased toward the positive answer'. This statement that
negative conducive yes-no questions with affirmative old and negative new assumption are' definitely
biased toward the positive answer' is exactly the opposite of the informants' judgements on questions of
the same type (namely (1) and (7)), as we have seen. Pope's concept of bias seems to be entirely
different from the concept of the expectation of an answer. It is surprising that Pope in her statement
goes on to say that 'in fact, both answers seem quite normal and acceptable, with no real strangeness or
difficulty about either of them' (Pope, 1975: 59). Even Bolinger, whose term conduciveness I am using
in this paper, is not very helpful in clarifying the issues at stake. He introduces his often-used term
conduciveness without sufficient definition and merely states (Bolinger, 1957: 10):

Manipulation of affirmative and negative is both a morphemic and distributional marker in that it 'conduces' a certain type
of answer. I call the class typified by it CONDUCIVE Qs [=questions].

Furthermore, he does not distinguish carefully enough between the expected and the desired answer to
a negative conducive question (Bolinger, 1957: 97): 'a conducive or leading Q [ = question] [is] one
that shows that a given answer is expected or desired'. Bolinger uses the expression conducive question
to mean a question oriented or biased toward a certain answer; but he does not specify the relation
between the answer, the sentence form and the speaker's assumptions.
In order to render precise the phrase the speaker's expectation of an answer one has to distinguish
between more than the desired and the expected answer. The main distinction is between the answer
which the speaker EXPECTS the hearer to give and either does or does not desire, and the answer which
the question itself POINTS TO and which I want to call the EXPECTABLE answer; it, too, may or
may not be desired by the speaker. As a rule, it is difficult or not at all possible for the hearer to
recognise the answer which the speaker really expects in the speech situation. The same holds true for
the answer he desires. But what the hearer does recognise is the expectable answer, which he can infer
from the question itself. Of course, the expectable answers, which are part of the set of linguistically
possible answers, neither have really to be given by the hearer nor have to be expected by the speaker
under all circumstances. In
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(8) and in (9), it seems easy enough to tell that the desired answers (in these cases identical with the
original assumption) differ from the expectable answers, but it is hardly possible for the hearer to tell
whether the speaker actually EXPECTS the desired or the expectable answer. Even upon taking into
account the syntactic, the semantic and the pragmatic aspects of the conducive question, the analysis
does not lead to a definite statement as to the expected answer (but often, especially when taking
prosodic variations into consideration, it does to the desired answer). With respect to the EXPECTABLE

answer, on the other hand, precise statements may be made, as I shall try to demonstrate.
Judging by the normal case of conducive yes-no questions as in (1) and , (7), the polarity of the
expectable answer is identical with the polarity of the new assumption as well as with that of the
sentence form, whereas old I assumption and new assumption differ as to their polarity. In Table 1 the
distribution of polarity in this type of negative yes-no question, called type I, is shown. In order to be
able to predict the expectable answer, the hearer has to recognise the underlying speaker-assumptions;
this is the prior condition for correctly interpreting questions like (1) and (7) as conducive questions.
Analysing the speaker's assumptions is a kind of deduction which is a general and normal prerequisite
not only for understanding conducive questions but for understanding what is implied and what is
meant and not said (in the Gricean sense, cf. Grice, 1975: 44) by the speaker.
Table I.
Type Example Original New Sentence form Expectable
assumption assumption answer
I (1), (7) + - - -( = no)
+ = affirmative polarity
- = negative polarity

Table 2.

Type Original assumption New assumption

I + -
II - +
III - -
IV + +
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Type I of negative yes-no questions, which we have discussed so far, is not the only form these
questions take. Table 2 shows the four imaginable kinds of negative yes-no questions with their
different distributions of underlying polarities. Types II—IV will be discussed in the following
sections.

4. The constellation of negative original (old) and affirmative new assumption, type II, does occur in
negative yes-no interrogative sentences, but these are then EXCLAMATIONS as in (5) and not
questions. Apparently, in English it seems to be impossible to use a negative yes-no question in order
to ask whether a certain situation actually exists which previously one had always thought of as not
existing. To give an example: imagine that you suddenly and completely unexpectedly realise in the
course of a conversation with a stranger that he attended the same school as you did. In a situation like
this, you cannot base a NEGATIVE question on the AFFIRMATIVE assumption: he attended my old school; and
therefore you cannot ask: 'Didn't you attend X school?' (or, regionally, 'Did you not attend X school?').
Yet, what is quite possible and natural is to formulate a POSITIVE yes-no question as in 'Did you attend X
school?'. (10) and (11) also belong to this class:

Positive yes-no questions of this kind, signalling the change from the negative old to the positive new
assumption and with it the speaker's surprise, are also conducive; (10) and (11) are oriented towards a
positive answer.

5. Negative yes-no questions with underlying negative original as well as negative new assumption
(type III), that is to say with no change of (the negative) polarity, do not seem to exist either. In all of
the transcribed texts I had access to, I was unable to find a single example. Nevertheless, in an
appropriate context and spoken with falling intonation and emphatic stress, the utterance (12) may
possibly be meant and understood
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as a request for confirming the negative assumption you are not happy that you have to teach Malagasy:
(12) Aren't you happy that you have to teach Malagasy?
The meaning becomes clearer by adding the initial particle so signalling a following conclusion and by
not contracting verb and negative particle: So, are you not happy that you have to teach Malagasy?.
But even so, it seems difficult to decide whether these questions may be uttered to mean So, I was right
in assuming that you are not happy to teach Malagasy (are you not?). In any case, (12) is not a genuine
yes-no question but rather an obvious conclusion drawn from the co-participant's previous utterances
without ever having been doubted by both the speaker and hearer. As a rule, declarative sentences with
negation are used in this kind of question function as for instance in (4).

6. Surprisingly enough, conducive negative yes-no questions as in the following examples (13)-(16)
are quite frequently used, although they are only SEEMINGLY based on a discrepancy between an
affirmative original and an affirmative new assumption (type IV):
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It is this type of conducive yes-no question that creates confusion when it comes to discussing the
expected, or rather, expectable answer. Closer inspection readily reveals the fact that in (13)—(16) no
change as to the polarity of the speaker's assumption has taken place; in other words, it is pointless to
talk of TWO assumptions. And in fact, one cannot argue that a 'change' has occurred at all; at the very
most one could speak of a resumption or activation of an — as yet unreflected or reflected —
assumption by the speaker. But in such cases, there seems to be no sense in speculating on whether or
not the assumption recognised by the hearer is in fact preceded by an identical older assumption. The
decision seems to be neither possible nor necessary. What is of relevance and interest in yes-no
questions of this description is that the speaker talks AS IF the divergence between the old and the new
assumption, typical for the normal instance of a negative yes-no question, type I, also holds true for
questions as in (13)-(16). With questions of type I as well as with questions of type IV the speaker
expresses his doubt as to the feasibility of his assumption and the possibility of the reverse assumption
being true. But in the first case his doubts and with them the adoption of the opposing assumption are
real, whereas they are only pretended in the second case. He who asks questions like (13)—(16) not
only deems a specific answer probable but KNOWS the answer. His purpose is not to have his
knowledge confirmed but to get the hearer's explicit agreement to the truth of the assumption
expressed. The question follows: what does the speaker intend to do, by practically forcing the hearer
to, perhaps reluctantly, commit himself? From the examples, one can easily deduce that the necessity to
proceed as has been described is due to reasons of argumentation and discourse planning. Hence, in
(13), A is thus provided with the cue to begin narrating a story. In (16) and in (14), A and F are
formulating their contributions to the arguments to follow by relying on В and С 'admitting' the truth of
the matter in question. Questions like (13)—(16) express a pretended discrepancy in an idiomatic form
and function as an invitation to say X, often combined with а reproach for not yet having said X. (The
question in (14) could be interpreted as T expect you to say X (=it is true that some of these holiday
camps...), why don't you say X?'.) It
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is noteworthy that in all examples an especially polite form is chosen for the request to agree. As one
explanation for this, one could argue that acts of questioning express the questioner's dependence on
the answerer. The speaker behaves as if he is inferior to the hearer due to his apparent lack of
knowledge. In this manner, the hearer is apparently granted an option which in fact does not exist at all.
On the other hand, when he really does NOT know the answer, the speaker is able to pretend as if he
knew it by using a conducive question. He thus avoids being regarded as totally dependent on the
hearer's knowledge, which would be the case when using a neutral yes-no question.
It is worth mentioning that some linguists (e.g. Leech and Svartvik, 1975: 113) take the expression of
surprise to be the only function of negative yes-no questions, probably due to the differing underlying
assumptions. In (13)-(16), though, NO surprise is expressed. This supports the observation that in
questions of this type (IV) there is only ONE underlying speaker-assumption.
There is a similarity between conducive questions of type IV and negative RHETORICAL yes-no
questions as they appear in the following:

(17) Very well then, do you not wish to remain an island? Do you wish to be swallowed by the
continent? We have been an island for all time, haven't we? Hasn't it served us well? Isn't it our
strength, our salvation! Wasn’t it that that saved us during the war?
(H. E. Bates, A Little of What You Fancy.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974: 125)
Conducive and rhetorical questions differ as to their function and position in speech. The speaker of a
rhetorical question does not expect the hearer to answer, and what is more, he would in certain
situations not even want the hearer to answer for fear of not getting the answer that is in accordance
with the presupposed truth of the opposite proposition of his question. Moreover, as opposed to
conducive questions of type IV, he does not pretend that there is a discrepancy in his underlying
assumptions.
Because of this pretended, but not in fact existing divergence between an old and a new assumption
in (13)—(16) and also in (12), it is possible to add a supplementary self-confirmation such as That's
what I thought following a confirming answer by the hearer (i.e. yes in (13)—(16) and no in (12)). This is
not possible after questions where old and new assumptions are of opposite polarity as in (1), (7), (10)
and (11). Instead, utterances such as (Oh), I was wrong, then, in assuming that... or That's surprising ...
may be appended whenever the polarity of the answer is similar to the polarity of the new assumption:
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(7') В: don't you take it ( = Time magazine)
A: no
B: — (Oh), I was wrong, then (in assuming that ...)
— That's surprising! (I thought you did.)
— * That's what I thought.
— * So I was right (in assuming that ...)
(10') A: is there one missing
B: I lost one yesterday
A: — (Oh), I was wrong, then (in assuming that ...)
— That's surprising! (I thought there wasn't.)
— * That's what I thought.
— *So I was right (in assuming that ...)
(13') C: didn 't one pig eat another pig
A: yes
C: — That's what I thought.
— *(Oh), I was wrong, then (in assuming that ...)
— * That's surprising!
(12') A: Aren't you happy that you have to teach Malagasy?
B: No, I'm not.
A: — That's what 1 thought.
—*(Oh), I was wrong, then (in assuming that ...)
— * That's surprising!
Positive yes-no questions with constant assumptions may also fulfil the same function as those
negative questions in (13)-(16). If they are not interpreted as discourse openers or the like, which is
what they normally and frequently are, but as genuine neutral yes-no questions (which is not their
function), then they are splendidly appropriate for triggering humorous responses as in the following
scene:7

(18) Wife cheerfully to her husband who is (trying to be) asleep: 'Are you asleep?' — Husband: 'No,
dead — leave the flowers and get out'.

7. At first sight, the conducive yes-no questions of type I, the normal case, and of type IV, the special
case, differ as to the expectable answer, i.e. no in I and yes in IV, which mirrors the assumption leading
to the asking of the question, i.e. the new and negative assumption in I and the constant and positive
assumption in IV. Taking the view of Halliday and Hasan (1976: 208) that yes and no as answers to
yes-no questions do not mean i agree' and 'I do not agree', as they do as rejoinders to statements, but
express simply polarity, one cannot account for the parallelism between types I and IV. According to
Halliday and Hasan's polarity-view, you are led to deduce that, having a negation in the answer to
questions of
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type I and an affirmation in the answer to questions of type IV, both kinds of answer are of a
fundamentally different and opposing nature. But in fact, both answers, irrespective of their negative
(type I) or positive (type IV) form, are AGREEMENTS. In both cases, the hearer agrees with no and yes
respectively to the speaker's assumption that underlies the question, and disagrees with the opposite
particle. To illustrate this point I have chosen as examples (1) for type I and (13) for type IV:

(1) X=you are on the same committee as Dave Cole is on

Assumption leading to the question: not X
Sentence form: not X
Possible answers:
a. NO = not X = it is the case that not X= agreement
b. YES = X = it is not the case that not X = contradiction (disagreement)
(13) X = one pig ate another pig
Assumption leading to the question: X
Sentence form: not X
Possible answers:
a. YES = X = /f is the case that X— agreement
b. NO = not X = it is not the case that X = contradiction (disagreement)

Of the two possible answers the expectable answer is the agreeing answer. According to the polarity of
the assumption this means either no or yes. And this rule holds true also for those POSITIVE yes-no
questions that are conducive, e.g. in the examples (10) and (11). Resulting from these observations is
the conclusion that there is no direct relationship between the expectable answers to yes-no questions
and the polarity of the sentence FORMS. What is decisive for the prediction of the expectable and the not
expectable answer to a conducive question is the (polarity of the) speaker's assumption that led to the
question with which the hearer is expected to agree (or not to agree) and not the polarity of the
interrogative sentence. Thus, in type IV the hearer, by uttering yes, does not agree with the
interrogative sentence or rather with its negative proposition but with the affirmative assumption
expressed by the speaker. The possible answers to conducive negative yes-no questions of type IV
behave like answers to POSITIVE yes-no questions. And indeed, the functional (not the formal)
similarities between the negative questions of type IV and the positive questions in (10) and (11) are
more marked than between IV and I. This observation is supported by taking into account the
answering particles used in German in equivalent question-answer pairs. Whereas yes in type I
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(e.g. (1)) has to be translated as doch, yes in type IV (e.g. (13)) is equivalent to German ja:

Ja is the expectable and agreeing answer in this example. If the speaker had put doch instead of/a his
answer would have been a CONTRADICTION and the whole exchange would have taken on a different
meaning similar to those discussed in the examples (1) and (7) of type I. To support this, one can point
out that to questions of type IV you can add phrases like that's true instead of or following yes as an
answer, but not in answering questions of type I; and the same goes for German y'a (as in (13"), Ja,
das ist richtig), whereas doch cannot be followed or replaced by das ist richtig as an answer to German
questions of type I. It is well known that with doch following a negative yes-no question in German a
speaker expresses his disagreement or contradiction whereas he agrees with nein.

8. Any negative or positive yes-no question is CONDUCIVE if the speaker expresses in the question and
independent of the sentence form a (new) assumption that causes him to ask the question, and which on
the one hand is opposed to his original assumption and on the other hand is in agreement with the
expectable answer. What is of importance is the — real or only pretended — change of (the polarity of)
the assumption which is responsible for the conducive power of the question. If the hearer does not infer
from the speaker's utterance this underlying change, he will understand it to be meant as a neutral
question and will thus answer accordingly. Answers to questions that were meant to be conducive but
were understood by the hearer as being neutral, will of course be unexpected and surprising for the
speaker and will normally cause an interruption of the exchange and the attempt to come to an
agreement as to the presuppositions and assumptions involved. To understand the conducive power of a
question, i.e. the change of assumptions and the expectation of an answer, the hearer has to apply a
process of (rhetorical, not logical) deduction, since it is part of the utterance meaning, not of the
sentence meaning. This process may be triggered off by formal phenomena such as polarity items (and
others, which I have disregarded in this paper) and by NEGATION. This seems to be the main function of
negation in conducive yes-no questions. For that reason, it is not entirely arbitrary whether a yes-no
question is negated or not, although this is a view that suggests itself. In principle, the equality of
negative and affirmative yes-no questions should be complete, as Jespersen (1961: 480: 'In a simple
nexus-question it is (...) of little importance whether the verb is given in a
101
positive or negative form'.) and Paul (1968) point out. However, Paul (1968: 136 ff.) adds that in
actual fact there exists a difference in function between both polarities in use:

Die reine Frage liegt gewissermassen in der Mitte zwischen positiver und negativer Behauptung. Sie verhalt sich neutral. Es
kann an und fur sich keinen Unterschied machen, ob man sie in eine positive oder negative Form kleidet, nur dass eben
deswegen die positive Form als das Einfachere vorgezogen wird und die negative die Funktion erhalt eine Modifikation
der reinen Frage auszudrucken.

In other words, the affirmative form is the unmarked and the negative form the marked form of the
polarity in yes-no questions and markedness may trigger off inferences and implicatures on the part of
the hearer. However, having said that, one has to add that negation is as a rule but not always used in
this function. There are negative yes-no questions that are neutral (and thus not conducive) as in the
following example given by Bolinger (1957: 101):

(19) A man's wife complains that she can't hang out the wash. (...) he is indoors and the blinds are
drawn. He has no reason to assume that the sun is shining, and the (...) (question) Isn't the sun
shining? is a suggested explanation (...)

Negative questions are meant as being neutral if the speaker is simply asking whether the non-
existence of a fact is true or not. This, however, is not very common; normally, you only ask for the
truth or falsity of a nonexistent fact when it has become the focus of, say, the ongoing conversation by
previous mention or conclusion (as in (19)).
From the fact that negative yes-no questions may be neutral (even if only very rarely), it follows that
negation is not a sufficient condition for the conduciveness of a question. Nor is it a necessary one as
(10) and (11) demonstrate: positive yes-no questions also can be conducive. But, as I pointed out at the
beginning, conduciveness is not a grammatical but a communicative or pragmatic feature of utterances;
it may be expressed by a number of linguistic means and by the circumstances of the speech-situation
including the context. The latter is certainly the case in the positive yes-no questions in (10) and (11).
As to negation, two explanations suggest themselves. First, a negative yes-no question is always
understood as a neutral question unless the context blocks this interpretation by the hearer. In this case,
the question is interpreted in the direction of the context and the speech-situation in such a way that it
fits into both. This is a normal procedure which has also been suggested for indirect speech acts. It
would invariably lead the hearer to understand the
102
question as no longer being neutral but conducive. Secondly, as with certain kinds of indirect speech
acts (cf. Searle, 1975) one can argue that negation is tightly connected with its function of expressing
conduciveness in yes-no questions. Thus, a negative yes-no question is normally understood as a
conducive question unless the context blocks the (automatic) inference process and suggests a neutral
interpretation instead. Both proposals look upon negative conducive questions as kinds of indirect
speech acts. Since negation in yes-no questions is so very closely connected with conduciveness, it
seems not entirely unreasonable to support the second explanation given above.

Received 3 March 1981 Fachbereich II

Revised version received Universitat Trier
12 October 1981 Postfach 38 25
5500 Trier West Germany

Notes
1. The following, as indeed most of the other examples cited, are taken from the material in the files of the
Survey of English Usage (University College, London). I am grateful to its Director, Professor Randolph
Quirk, for his permission to collect data from the Survey and use it for my research work. The combination of
letters and numbers at the end of each example refers to the slip in the Survey files. I have omitted all those
features of the Survey system that are not relevant to this study. In the remaining cases the nuclear tone is
marked as falling ('), rising ('), rising-falling (), falling-rising (") or remaining level ("). Pauses of normal
length are marked with a dash (—); two or three dashes represent pauses of greater length. The utterances or
parts of utterances commented on in this paper have been italicized. I shall not discuss any problems in
connection with the analysis and designation of other question types. Most authors include in their
classifications alternative questions and others. There is a vast amount of literature pertinent to questions,
which may be found listed in the bibliography by Egli and Schleichert (1976) and its supplement by Ficht
(1978).
2. This refers back to an observation by Conrad (1978: 44), who claims: 'die Menge der strukturell als moglich
vorausdeterminierten Antworten [ist] mit der Menge der erwarteten Antworten indentisch'. In two detailed
studies (1976; 1978), Conrad is engaged in describing and explaining the speaker's expectations connected
with questions. Concerning the conditions for a valid answer which are set when uttering a question, he writes
(Conrad, 1978: 29):
103

The relation between a question and its answer, as described in this paragraph, is based on a property of the
question which Conrad (1976: 82; 1978: 29) has labelled strukturelle Antwortdetermination. It determines
the number and form of the possible answers and depends on the semantic, and not the syntactic, structure of
the question.
3. I am thinking primarily of the quantifiers some and any (and other polarity items), of indirect speech acts
(e.g. a declarative sentence form functioning as a question) and of certain intonation patterns. There are a
great many studies dealing with some and any, e.g. the relevant chapter in Bolinger (1977), the paper by
Borkin (1971) on polarity items in general and the study by Erdmann (1976).
Incidentally, specific assumptions and expectations are expressed when uttering a yes-no question in a
number of other languages besides English and German; this is pointed out by Moravcsik (1971), who
analyses thoroughly a great many languages from this aspect.
4. According to Bolinger (1957: 61) tentations are 'markers that call explicit attention to the assumptiveness of
the assertion. They serve as Q- [ = question] markers because the very necessity of calling attention to one's
assumptions qua assumptions is taken to expect confirmations'.
5. More detailed statements concerning exclamations in general and interrogative sentences functioning as
exclamations may be found in Roncador (1977).
6. The prevailing uncertainty with respect to the assessment of the so-called orientation or bias (or, in German,
Antworterwartung) is reflected in the vagueness of these terms. Most authors do not distinguish between the
old and the new assumption. Thus, it is left undecided whether the expected answer agrees with the old or
with the new assumption. Antworterwartung, for instance, is used by Regula (1956: 15), who gives no clear
and satisfactory definition, and by Conrad (1976; 1978), who says (1978: 43): 'die Antworterwartung [stellt]
eine Annahme oder Vermutung des Fragestellers iiber diejenige(n) Aussage(n) dar, die er mit einem
bestimmten Wahrscheinlichkeitsgrad auf seine Frage hin als Antwort erwartef.’
7. Following a cartoon by A. Jaffee, in: Mad's Al Jqffee Spews Out Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.
(Signet Books T4987), New York etc.: New American Library, 1968.

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