Yes–no question

Yes–no questions present an exclusive disjunction, namely a pair of alternatives of which only one is a felicitous answer.

[3] In Esperanto, the word "ĉu" added to the beginning of a statement makes it a polar question.

The presence of the polar particle क्या (kyā) does not make the characteristic prosody optional.

'In the sentences (A) and (B) above, क्या (kyā) is not the argument of any predicate and hence acts as a yes–no question particle.

[4] The most unmarked location for polar-question particle क्या (kyā) is the clause-initial position.

In an almost mirror image pattern, thematic क्या (kyā) "what", is natural in the immediately preverbal position but odd/marked elsewhere.

A question is formed by appending the particle か to a statement, as shown in the table below.

Yes–no questions are also formed in Latin using the word "nonne" to imply that the interrogator thinks the answer to be the affirmative and with "num" to imply that the interrogator thinks the answer to be the negative.

In Russian, the word “li” acts as an unambiguous signal to a yes–no question interrogative.

I.e., the focus of the question is on the action, implying, depending on context, "She didn't forget to buy the book, did she?"

MašaMasha.NOMkupilaboughtKNIGU?book.ACCMaša kupila KNIGU?Masha.NOM bought book.ACCIn (2a) there are no particular context requirement, but the finite verb is the position of the pitch accent.

[7] With this accent the question is interpreted as (depending on context) "Was it a book that Masha bought?"

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.

[10] 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:[10] Another part of the same study was the question "Do you have a price on a fifth of Jim Beam?"

[10] 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.

[2] However, simple "yes" or "no" word sentence answers to yes–no questions can be ambiguous in English.

In New Guinea Pidgin, Polish and Huichol, the answer given has the logical polarity implied by the form of the question.

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?".

Commonly, this is clarified either by intonation (if the question is spoken) or the inclusion of an explicit question-word such as sumi ("where").