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1. Introduction This article discusses yes/ no ( y/ n-) questions across varieties of Chinese, past and present. For reasons of space, this article is limited to surveying the modern surface structures, without making any attempt to track developmental pathways, chart out semantic or pragmatic distinctions, or review syntactic analyses. For instance, some types of such questions have implications for focus or imply presuppositions, while others are neutral without any presuppositions: we will generally not pay attention to aspects like these at all. Y/ n-questions, also called “polar questions”, solicit answers that are (the equivalent of) ‘yes’ or ‘no’. In some varieties of Chinese, such as Mandarin, y/ n-questions can be marked by a rising intonation only, as in (1) (B. Li 2006:54 [93a]), but there are also various other ways to mark y/ n-questions. The latter are the focus of this article.  1. 那個禮拜老板不在?   (Mandarin)   Nà     ge    lǐbài   lǎobǎn  bù     zài?   that  …