Published Article

ABSTRACT

This paper carefully assesses negative and positive polar questions in the English language. Users of the English language all over the world use the language to elicit information, and so they ask questions when necessary. In this paper, it was established that a question is called "polar" because it deals with polarity. Polarity simply has to do with the opposition between positive and negative. A polar question is a type of question that elicits a two-way answer—positive or negative. A polar question contrasts with content questions, which contain an interrogative or question word like "what" or "when", in which some more detailed answers are given. Finally, in asking the polar question, one has to make use of the modal auxiliary or the non-modal auxiliary verbs inverted to come before the subject of the sentence. One of the recommendations made in this paper was that it is important for students to learn to include the modal verb after "yes" or "no," as answering with a simple "yes" or "no" will be taken by a native speaker to indicate that the speaker is either being rude or has no interest in the conversation, and the conversation will end abruptly, with both parties feeling mildly offended.

KEYWORDS: Polar question, Negative and Positive polar questions.