The Classification of Words

§ 410. The alternative question Are you going out or do you prefer to stay at home? is a compound sentence containing two coordinated interrogative clauses each of which is the syntactical opposite of a declarative clause. Only the intona­tion of the second clause is not interrogative.
Note. In cases like Are you going out or not? Are you. going to Moscow or to Leningrad?
¹ "The expression Who came signals a question, not because of a different arrangement, but solely because the signal of question is in the \\or I alto as a word". (Ch. C. Fries, op cit ).
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the part following the conjunction or may be re­garded as representing a clause similar to the preceding one in everything but the appended words and the intonation.
Disjunctive questions are peculiar complex sentences the principal clause being a statement and the subordinate clause the syntactical opposite of its«predication with regard to two categories, 'presentation' and 'information.' (See next §.)
You don't smoke, do you? She is beautiful, isn't she?
§ 411. The sentences below form opposemes of some syn­tactical category.

Open the door. It is raining.
Do you like it? You know.
Don't open the door.
It is not raining. (It isn't
raining.)
Don't you like it?
You don't know.

In these opposemes meanings of 'affirmation' and 'nega­tion' are the particular meanings of some syntactical category. It is difficult to find a name for such a general category cov­ering statements, questions and orders. Seeing that in modern science the components of a 'yes-no' system are used as units of information, ¹ we shall call the category under discussion the category of information.
The meaning of 'affirmative' information is expressed by a zero form, and the meaning of 'negative' information' by means of the predicate negation, the syntactical word-mor­pheme not (n't) placed after the syntactical (part of the) predicate.