Are there any languages with only one of “yes” or “no”?

Question

Many modern languages have single words for "yes" and "no" (e.g. English), and some have more than a simple pair (e.g. French), while others have no word for "yes" or "no" (e.g. Latin and Irish).

Both "yes" and "no" have at least two meanings:

• yes, you are correct
• yes, the positive of what you said
• no, you are incorrect
• no, the negative of what you said

E.g.

That's not your dog, is it?

Yes, it is. (Oui in French)

No, it is. (Si in French)

No, it isn't. (Non in French)

Other languages also have a word for "You are correct, the negative of what you said", i.e. "Yes, it isn't".

The simplest form in Irish is to repeat the verb in either the positive or negative:

That's not your dog, is it?

It is.

It isn't.

I'm interested that all languages I know of have at least an opposite pair of "yes/no" or none at all. Are there any languages with a word for "yes" but not "no" or vice versa?

Answer 1

Finnish has particle words for "yes": "Kyllä" (formal) and "joo", "juu", "jep" (very colloquial), but no such words for "no".

However, one generally responds to questions with an echo response (as in Irish, Latin, Chinese and Japanese).

For negative responses, the negation verb en/et/ei/enme/ette/eivät is used (conjugated for person and number).

e.g.

Positive response to question:

"Tuletteko kaupungista?" ("Are you coming from town?")

"Tulemme." ("We are coming.") / "Kyllä." ("Yes") / "Joo." ("Yes")

Negative response to question:

"Tunnetteko herra Lehdon?" ("Do you know Mr Lehto?")

"En tunne." ("I don't know.") / "En." ("I don't.")

For example, the response to "Does she know Mr Lehto?" would be conjugated "Ei.".

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^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_and_no#Related_words_in_other_languages_and_translation_problems}