And the Biblical Hebrew Negative Response

It is agreed that Biblical Hebrew (BH) does not have a word for "Yes!" and that the BH positive answer uses what linguists call the echo system. On the other hand, used independently as a negative answer is frequently understood as a negative answer particle ("No!"). Upon considering the evidence from BH and languages in general, the first half of this paper argues that used as such is a negative verbal clause, with the verbal part being omitted. The second half attempts to schematize various forms of the BH negative responses using .