Editing Question (section)

== Responses and answers<span id="Responses"></span> ==
{{See also|Yes–no question#Answers|Answer ellipsis}}

The [[Cambridge Grammar of the English Language]] distinguishes between an ''answer'' (being a member of the set of logically possible answers, as delineated in {{slink||Semantic classification}}) and a ''response'' (any statement made by the addressee in reply to the question).<ref name="CGEL"/> For example, the following are all possible responses to the question "Is Alice ready to leave?"

 i.  (a) Yes.
     (b) She's ready.
     (c) No, she's not.
 ii. (a) I don't know.
     (b) Why do you ask?
     (c) She might be.
 iii.(a) She's still looking for her wallet.
     (b) She wasn't expecting you before 5 o'clock.
     (c) I'll let you know when she's ready.

Only the [i] responses are answers in the Cambridge sense. The responses in [ii] avoid committing to a ''yes'' or ''no'' answer. The responses in [iii] all ''[[implicature|implicate]]'' an answer of ''no'', but are not logically equivalent to ''no''. (For example, in [iiib], the respondent can cancel the implicature by adding a statement like: "Fortunately, she packed everything up early.")

Along similar lines, Belnap and Steel (1976) define the concept of a ''direct answer'':

<blockquote>A direct answer to a given question is a piece of language that completely, but just completely, answers the question...What is crucial is that it be effectively decidable whether a piece of language is a direct answer to a specific question... To each clear question there corresponds a set of statements which are ''directly'' responsive. ... A direct answer must provide an unarguably final resolution of the question.<ref>[[Nuel Belnap]] & T.B. Steel Jr. (1976) ''The Logic of Questions and Answers'', pages 3, 12 & 13, [[Yale University Press]] {{ISBN|0-300-01962-9}}</ref>
</blockquote>

=== Answering negative questions ===
{{main|Yes and no}}

"Negative questions" are interrogative sentences which contain negation in their phrasing, such as "Shouldn't you be working?" These can have different ways of expressing affirmation and denial from the standard form of question, and they can be confusing, since it is sometimes unclear whether the answer should be the opposite of the answer to the non-negated question. For example, if one does not have a passport, both "Do you have a passport?" and "Don't you have a passport?" are properly answered with "No", despite apparently asking opposite questions. The Japanese and Korean languages avoid this ambiguity. Answering "No" to the second of these in Japanese or Korean would mean, "I ''do'' have a passport".

A similar ambiguous question in English is "Do you mind if...?" The responder may reply unambiguously "Yes, I do mind," if they do mind, or "No, I don't mind," if they do not, but a simple "No" or "Yes" answer can lead to confusion, as a single "No" can seem like a "Yes, I do mind" (as in "No, please don't do that"), and a "Yes" can seem like a "No, I don't mind" (as in "Yes, go ahead"). An easy way to bypass this confusion would be to ask a non-negative question, such as "Is it all right with you if...?"

Some languages have different particles (for example the [[French language|French]] "''si''", the [[German language|German]] "''doch''" or the [[Swedish language|Swedish]], [[Danish language|Danish]], and [[Norwegian language|Norwegian]] "''jo''") to answer negative questions (or negative statements) in an affirmative way; they provide a means to express contradiction.