Chapter 10
Responding to polar questions without a polarity item ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in Finnish
Polar questions and their responses have been a subject of increasing interest for conversation analysts.
This paper contributes to this research by studying answers to interrogatively formatted polar questions in Finnish that do
not contain a separate element for expressing positive or negative polarity. We will show that the answers are used for a
range of practices that form a continuum from cases where the polarity is implied to ones where the recipient, in their
response, leaves it to the questioner to evaluate the quality of the response. Moving beyond the polarity of the question,
these answers focus on what the recipient inferred to be the core relevance of the question, furthering the progressivity of
the interaction by sustaining the ongoing project.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Implied polarity
- 3.From polarity to scalarity
- 4.Answering requests for evaluation
- 5.Treating the presuppositions of the question as invalid
- 6.Conclusion and discussion
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Acknowledgements
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Notes
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References