On Negative Answers to Polar Questions in English

Abstract

This paper investigates negative answers to polar questions in English. Focusing on Kramer and Rawlins’ (2009) and Holmberg’s (2013, 2016) elliptical approaches to polar answers, we show that their analyses fall short of capturing all the relevant data. We argue that a modification of Holmberg’s (2016) analysis of negative polar answers is optimally necessary. In particular, we suggest that Holmberg’s analysis needs to be modified by incorporating and extending Kramer and Rawlins’ assumption that the negative answer particle no requires a negative concord chain. It is also shown that the proposed analysis can best be instantiated under the PF-deletion approach to ellipsis, rather than the LF-copying approach advanced in Holmberg’s system. We also explore the possibility of extending the proposed analysis to negative reactions/rejoinders to statements.