Yes and no answers to Russian negative polar questions
In colloquial Russian answers yes and no to negative polar questions can either stand for confirmation or contradiction of the proposition of a question. This paper uses the results of an acceptability judgment experiment to investigate the correlation between the choice of yes or no answer and the way of expressing negation and the presence of li particle in a question and also of comprehension of the short yes answer. The results showed that there are several competing strategies for answering negative polar questions and acceptability judgments of possible answers in Russian. Importantly, for questions with li particle most of the participants used a different strategy than for other types of questions. Before the present paper, the patterns of choice between yes- and no-answers to negative questions had not been experimentally researched. In the future, it seems interesting to conduct similar studies with other languages, as well as to compare the results in different age groups.