Responding to negative assertions in Germanic: On yes and no in English, Dutch and Swedish

Abstract

This paper presents evidence from three acceptability judgement experiments that tested the acceptability of the response particles YES and NO in affirming and rejecting responses to negative assertions in three Germanic languages. The study shows that the acceptability of the particles differs between the three languages, but does not correlate with the availability of a dedicated rejecting particle like German doch in the particle system of a language. Furthermore, the experiments revealed that there is considerable inter-individual variation. The paper thus contributes to the ongoing exploration of inter-individual variability in the use and meaning of response particles, which was first explored experimentally for German by Claus, Meijer, Repp and Krifka (2017). The paper discusses current theories of response particles and offers a preliminary account of the findings in the anaphora account of Roelofsen and Farkas (2015).