In linguistics, an echo answer or echo response is a way of answering a polar question without using words for yes and no. The verb used in the question is simply echoed in the answer, negated if the answer has a negative truth-value. For examples:
- "Did you go to the cinema?" (or "Didn't you go to the cinema?")
- "I did not." or "I didn't go."
Read more about Echo Answer: Finnish, Celtic Languages, Latin, Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese
Famous quotes containing the words echo and/or answer:
“The moralist and the revolutionary are constantly undermining one another. Marx exploded a hundred tons of dynamite beneath the moralist position, and we are still living in the echo of that tremendous crash. But already, somewhere or other, the sappers are at work and fresh dynamite is being tamped in place to blow Marx at the moon. Then Marx, or somebody like him, will come back with yet more dynamite, and so the process continues, to an end we cannot foresee.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,
The plainsong cuckoo grey,
Whose note full many a man doth mark
And dares not answer nay.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)