yesnoquestion

A yes-no question, also called a polar question, is a type of interrogative sentence that seeks confirmation or denial of a proposition. It is typically answerable with a simple "yes" or "no" and is contrasted with information-seeking questions such as those beginning with who, what, where, when, why, or how.

In English, yes-no questions are usually formed by fronting an auxiliary verb to the beginning of the clause (subject-auxiliary inversion). Examples include "Are you coming?" and "Have you finished?" When there is no auxiliary in the base form, do-support is used, as in "Do you like tea?" Questions can also involve negation, as in "Don't you like tea?" In addition to surface changes, rising intonation at the end of a declarative sentence often signals a yes-no question in casual speech, and a question mark marks the written form.

Cross-linguistically, yes-no questions are produced through a variety of means. Some languages use a question particle or clitic, such as 吗 (ma) in Mandarin Chinese: 尼在吗？(Are you here?) or 你好吗？(Are you well?). Japanese uses the particles か (ka) or the polite form ですか (desu ka). Other languages rely on intonation alone or on punctuation, while still marking the clause as a question.

Functionally, yes-no questions are used to seek confirmation, request reassurance, or manage the flow of conversation. In linguistics and natural language processing, they are a fundamental category for analysis, annotation, and reliability assessments in dialogue systems.