正反问

The 正反问 ("positive-negative question") forms a yes-no question by presenting the two possible answers and letting the listener pick: 你去不去? is literally "you go not go?" No question particle is needed or allowed; 去不去吗 is a beginner's double-marking error, since the pattern is already a question. Answers echo one of the offered poles rather than saying yes or no: 去 ("going") or 不去 ("not going"), which is why Chinese famously has no single word for yes; the verb itself does the confirming.

The object can sit inside or after the frame: 你吃不吃苹果? and 你吃苹果不吃? both work, with the first now dominant in the standard language. For completed actions the negative pole switches to 没: 你吃了没有? ("have you eaten?", the greeting), often clipped in speech to 你吃了没?, which is the A-not-A pattern wearing streetwear.

Two members of the family do outsized duty. 是不是 seeks confirmation of a whole proposition and can slide around the sentence: 你是不是明天走? / 你明天是不是走? / 你明天走，是不是? all ask "you're leaving tomorrow, right?", with the final position shading toward a tag question. 有没有 owns possession and existence (有没有问题? any questions?) and, before a verb, past experience: 你有没有去过北京? ("have you been to Beijing?"), a construction southern Mandarin favors and the standard language has fully absorbed.

Two-syllable verbs and adjectives abbreviate by repeating only their first syllable: 喜不喜欢 (like it or not?), 知不知道 (do you know?), 可不可以 (may I?), 高不高兴 (happy or not?). The full forms (喜欢不喜欢) remain correct but feel heavier, like unabbreviated legalese. The abbreviation is obligatory listening vocabulary: natives produce 喜不喜欢 at speed, and a learner parsing syllable-by-syllable hears "like-not-like" and must not go looking for a verb 喜.

In most daily exchanges 你去吗? and 你去不去? are interchangeable, and learners can treat them so. The differences live at the edges. A-not-A is structurally neutral, both answers explicitly offered, which makes it the form of surveys, forms, and genuine open inquiry; repeated, it turns insistent, the parent's 你到底去不去? ("are you going or NOT?") where 到底 tightens the screws. 吗, by contrast, can carry loaded propositions: 你不去吗? ("you're not going?") questions a negative assumption, something A-not-A cannot do, since its poles are fixed. And after verbs of asking, the embedded question must be A-not-A: 他问我去不去 ("he asked whether I was going"), never 他问我去吗.

Regional texture, for the curious ear: Taiwan Mandarin and southern speech reach for 有没有 and V-了-没 more freely, while 吗 leans slightly more northern and written. None of it will get a learner misunderstood; all of it is audible within one episode of any Chinese drama.