Making ‘yes’ stronger by saying ‘no’: Utterance-initial iya in statements of ‘yes’ in Japanese

The present study examined the recordings of naturally occurring conversations among native speakers of Japanese, and analyzed the cases of iya ‘no’ that are uttered in response to yes-no questions. The analysis has shown that iya can be uttered in response to a yes-no question even when the response to the question is ‘yes,’ as long as the propositional information that follows iya signals ‘yes’ to the question. When iya prefaces a response of ‘yes,’ the speaker can express a stronger message of ‘yes’ since it creates a pragmatic effect of expressing needless to ask… along with signaling ‘yes’ with the propositional information that follows iya .