Two kinds of answers to yes-no questions in Czech and Spanish.

International audienceThis paper deals with two types of answers to polar questions: polarity-based and truth based questions (see Pope 1972). I show that languages that typically behave as polarity-based languages, like e.g. Spanish and Czech, also possess truth-based answers. This can be in particular seen in answers to negative questions. I argue that this is due to the fact that there are two types of negative questions: negative questions with pleonastic negation that behave as positive questions, and "true" negative questions that convey a negative presupposed assertion. Only the latter receive a truth-based answer. I then propose that particles in polarity-based answers express absolute polarity, while particles in truth-based answers express relative polarity to the extent that they (dis)confirm the presupposed assertion conveyed by the question. Truth-based answers to positive questions are also possible, but they are identical at surface to polarity-based answers