Chapter 10. Responding to polar questions without a polarity item ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in Finnish

Abstract

Polar questions and their responses have been a subject of increasing interest for conversation analysts. This paper contributes to this research by studying answers to interrogatively formatted polar questions in Finnish that do not contain a separate element for expressing positive or negative polarity. We will show that the answers are used for a range of practices that form a continuum from cases where the polarity is implied to ones where the recipient, in their response, leaves it to the questioner to evaluate the quality of the response. Moving beyond the polarity of the question, these answers focus on what the recipient inferred to be the core relevance of the question, furthering the progressivity of the interaction by sustaining the ongoing project.