Affirmative and Negative Responses
Special affirmative and negative words (particles) are often found in responses to questions, and sometimes to other assertions by way of agreement or disagreement. In English, these are yes and no respectively, in French oui and non, in Swedish ja and nej, and so on. Not all languages make such common use of particles of this type; in some (such as Welsh) it is more common to repeat the verb or another part of the predicate, with or without negation accordingly.
Complications sometimes arise in the case of responses to negative statements or questions; in some cases the response that confirms a negative statement is the negative particle (as in English: "You're not going out? No."), but in some languages this is reversed. Some languages have a distinct form for yes given in response to a negative, such as French si and Swedish jo (these serve to contradict the negative statement suggested by the first speaker).
Read more about this topic: Negation (linguistics)
Famous quotes containing the words affirmative, negative and/or responses:
“Whether or not the world would be vastly benefited by a total banishment from it of all intoxicating drinks seems not now an open question. Three-fourths of mankind confess the affirmative with their tongues, and I believe all the rest acknowledge it in their hearts.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Apathy is one of the characteristic responses of any living organism when it is subjected to stimuli too intense or too complicated to cope with. The cure for apathy is comprehension.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)