Hi, thanks for viewing this post. I’ve been keeping running into those so called "polarity-based” yes/no problems lately.
So, when asked, “Are you not hungry?”
Should I answer “Yes, I am hungry.” or “No, I am hungry.”?
Thanks!
Frankly speaking, putting “I am” after “No” sounds rather weird to me (but “No, I’m not” is alright). I’d definitely go for the first option; I wouldn’t use “hungry” at the end though. There’s no need for it and I dare say it could sound unnatural to some people. So, “Yes, I am” would be my bet.
I see…so this is pretty much saying that the second part of the sentence has to agree with the first part, with regards to affirmative + affirmative/negative + negative…right?
Look, you need to take into account that I’m not a native speaker so I’m not the most reliable source of information on English grammar in the world. But again - I have never seen any instance of combining “Yes” with a negative or “No” with an affirmative and I’m pretty sure few would find it acceptable.
“Are you not hungry?”
negative answer:
No, I’m not
positive answer:
Yes, I am