This conversation analytic study examines the linguistic resources for indexing epistemic stance in second
position in question sequences in Greek conversation. It targets three formats for providing affirming/confirming answers to polar
questions: unmarked and marked positive response tokens, and repetitions. It is shown that the three formats display different
functional distributions. Unmarked response tokens do ‘simple’ answering, marked response tokens provide overt confirmations, and
repetitional answers assert the respondent’s epistemic authority besides confirming the question’s proposition. Unmarked and
marked response tokens accept the questioner’s epistemic stance, whereas repetitional answers may accept or resist the epistemic
terms of the question, depending on the action being implemented by the question. This study sheds light on the organization of
questioning and answering in Greek conversation and the role of epistemics in the design of polar answers.
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