Strategies for answering questions that contain negation are different for different languages. In Russian, the "yes" and "no" answers to such questions often give rise to ambiguity: they can mean both agreement with the propositional content of the question or denial. This paper analyzes the results of an acceptability judgment task in a sample of 50 adult native Russian speakers and an experiment in a sample of 20 native speakers. During the experiment, the subjects answered questions with negation expressed in different ways (the negative particle, pronouns and pronominal words with the prefix "ni-", negative predicatives, negation in combination with the "li" particle) and evaluated the possible answers in terms of their grammatical acceptability. The results of the experiment showed that the way of expressing negation in the question and the "li" particle affect both the judgments on the acceptability of possible answers and the choice of an answer with an implication of denial.