Polar interrogatives are questions that can be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (the reason why they are also called yes/no-questions). Their function is to elicit an answer from the addressee, as in the following example.
y/n
A: ix2 hungry
‘Are you hungry?’
B: yes, (ix1 hungry)
‘Yes, (I am hungry).’
In DGS, polar interrogatives can be answered either by just signing yes or no, or by answering with a full sentence, as it is also pointed out the example above. Another possibility for answering a polar interrogative in DGS is to use a sentence that implicitly answers the question as shown in the next example.
y/n
A: ix2 today party come
‘Are you coming to the party today?’
hs
B: ix1 must work
‘I have to work.’
By answering with the sentence ‘ix1 must work’, the addressee implicitly states that he or she doesn’t have time to come to the party. In DGS, the answer has to be accompanied by a negative headshake. Polar interrogatives in DGS are typically accompanied by distinctive non-manual markers, that will be introduced in [Syntax 1.2.1.1.]