Yes/no question

In linguistics, a yes–no question, also known as a binary question, a polar question, or a general question,^[1] is a closed-ended question whose expected answer is one of two choices, one that provides an affirmative answer to the question versus one that provides a negative answer to the question. Typically, the choices are either "yes" or "no" in English. Yes–no questions present an exclusive disjunction, namely a pair of alternatives of which only one is a felicitous answer. In English, such questions can be formed in both positive and negative forms:

• positive yes/no question: "Will you be here tomorrow?"
• negative yes/no question: "Won't you be here tomorrow?"^[2]

Yes–no questions are in contrast with non-polar wh-questions. The latter are also called content questions, and are formed with the five Ws plus an H ("who", "what", "where", "when", "why", "how"). Rather than restricting the range of possible answers to two alternatives, content questions are compatible with a broad range of alternative answers. For example, questions beginning with "who", involve a set of several alternatives, from which one is to be drawn; in this respect, they are open-ended questions.^[2] In contrast, yes–no questions are closed-ended questions, as they only permit one of two answers, namely "yes" or "no".