A functional description of questions 91question ‘Have you been to Paris?’ and a ‘yes’ answer to the question ‘Has
the boat left ALREADY?’ have different functions. The first ‘yes’ is an
elliptical form of ‘Yes, I have been to Paris’ which supplies the information
whereas the second ‘yes’ is an elliptical form of ‘Yes, your assumption is
correct’ which confirms the speaker’s assumption. In other words, the difference
between these two questions is not so much that one has neutral polarity
and the other has biased polarity, but rather that one seeks information and
the other seeks confirmation. The former is therefore similar to wh-questions
which seek information, such as ‘What country have you been to?’ except
that the information it seeks is more specific (cf. Churchill 1978). It is only
because English has a yes/no answering system that we are misled into
believing that the function of questions like ‘Have you been to Paris?’ is to
elicit a ‘yes’ answer (hence a confirmation) or a ‘no’ answer (hence a
disconfirmation) and therefore they have a different function from wh-questions
(see the discussion on Alternative Questions, pp. 96–8 below, and examples
25 and 26).
That the so-called neutral polarity yes/no questions are in fact information
seeking questions can be further supported by the fact that they do not
necessarily expect either a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. The utterance ‘Are you still
here?’ spoken with high termination (Brazil et al. 1980) by the speaker to
his colleague working in the office at 7 o’clock in the evening does not
expect either a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. It functions as an information question
tantamount to ‘Why are you still here?’. A mere ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response from
the addressee would be odd or interpreted as unwillingness to interact with
the speaker.
Thirdly, those ‘questions’ which express disappointment and annoyance
seem to expect neither a ‘yes’ nor a ‘no’ answer. Either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’
answer to ‘Can’t you drive straight?’ would be considered a cheeky remark
or a retort. Silent acquiescence is likely to be the expected response. Hence
it is doubtful whether such utterances should be considered to belong to the
category of ‘questions’ as defined by Quirk et al. at all.
Similar problems can be found in their handling of tag questions. Tag
questions are considered a further type of yes/no question which conveys
negative or positive orientation. Quirk et al. propose four types of tag questions:
Type 1 He likes his , he? (Rising tone)Type 2 He doesn’t like his , he? (Rising tone)Type 3 He likes his , he? (Falling tone)Type 4 He doesn’t like his , he? (Falling tone)Each of these four types asserts the speaker’s assumption and invites a
response. Each, they say, has different assumptions and expectations: