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What is the correct response to the question:

何か質問はありませんか？ (Nanika shitsumon wa arimasenka?)

Available options are:

  1. はい、そうです。 (Hai sou desu.)
  2. はい、ありません。 (Hai arimasen.)
  3. いいえ、あります。 (iie arimasu.)

Why is #2 the correct answer?

I heard this question in a jlpt practice test.

Chocolate
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Zaks
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    Related, perhaps: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/2908/9831 / https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/5144/9831 / https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/9349/9831 – Chocolate Oct 13 '19 at 14:46
  • Out of curiosity, what level and section of the JLPT did you get this from? – jarmanso7 Oct 13 '19 at 15:33
  • I don't feel confident enough to post an answer, but based on [this answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/5152/32952) in one of the links posted by @Chocolate, I think that the answer #2 translates as "that's the case (はい), I don't have (ありません) any questions". – jarmanso7 Oct 13 '19 at 15:39
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTxeyJsNenA goto timestamp 30:46 – Zaks Oct 13 '19 at 16:29
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/99847/discussion-between-jack-and-zaks). – Jack Bosma Oct 13 '19 at 16:39
  • Is it possible that this question is an ill posed question? It's not actually from a JLPT test but a practice quiz which has not undergone cross checking before publication? I ask because it seems to me that 2 and 3 both equally correct grammatically. Maybe the question requires a disambiguation - whether or not there are questions or not - and the test writer meant to go back and fill that in later, but ran out of time or forgot. – Craig Hicks Oct 13 '19 at 23:58
  • @Craig Hicks not sure about that – Zaks Oct 14 '19 at 06:36

1 Answers1

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I think the easiest way to get to this answer is the process of elimination.

「はい、そうです」 is out because the question is weighing yes/no answers equally but this answer is just confirming what the speaker said, which only makes sense when the speaker emphasized one over the other, such as 「質問はありませんね？」

「いいえ、あります」 is out because if the answer starts with "No", what needs to follow is a negative answer, such as 「いいえ、ありません」

I actually think 「はい、ありません」 is a rather unnatural answer, but it certainly is the least unnatural answer of the three. The key to understand why this answer makes sense is that 「はい」 here is an interjection, not a positive answer. But precisely because of that confusion, I'd never answer this question with 「はい、ありません」. I'da rather use 「いいえ、ありません」.

Kohsuke Kawaguchi
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