Negation and related phenomena Negation is marked by individual words (such as not, no, never) or by affixes within a word (such as n’t, un, non). Very often there is an effect on the whole clause. POSITIVE CLAUSENEGATIVE CLAUSE He has signed the agreement. He hasn’t signed the agreement.

Syntactically, positive is the default polarity. All canonical clauses are positive. Positive and negative clauses differ in the way they combine with other expressions in the structure of larger units.

There are 3 major differences between positive and negative clauses 1.Addition of not even I. POSITIVE CLAUSE I have read your book, not even the introduction. II. NEGATIVE CLAUSE I haven’t read your book, not even the introduction.

The addition of not is not obligatory (I haven’t read your book, even the introduction) but the crucial point is that it can occur in the negative clause (ii) but is impossible in the positive.

2. The connective adjuncts so and neither or nor Switching the connectives is ungrammatical. i. POSITIVE CLAUSEI have read your book, and so have my students. ii. NEGATIVE CLAUSEI haven’t read your book, and neither have my students.

3. Confirmatory tags Reversed polarity POSITIVE CLAUSE+NEGATIVE TAG They have read my book, haven’t they? NEGATIVE CLAUSE+POSITIVE TAG They haven’t read my book, have they?

So they have read my book, have they? Amazing! Constant Polarity These tags don’t ask for confirmation, but suggest an attitude such as surprise, disbelief, disapproval or the like Negative constant polarity tags are usually not accepted as Standard English So they haven’t read my book, haven’t they.

Subclausal Negation We have seen that the effect of a negative element is to make the clause containing it negative. Negative elements don’t always have this effect however. In the cases where they don’t, the negation is subclausal.

Affixal negation The most obvious case where elements don’t make a clause negative is where the negative element is an affix other than n’t that appears on auxiliary verbs. Take negative prefixes as in dislike, inattentive, non-negotiable, or unwilling, or suffixes such as less in homeless.

SUBCLAUSAL NEGATIONCLAUSAL NEGATION He wasn’t unkind, not even to me. He was unkind, and so was Sue. He wasn’t kind, and neither was Sue. He was unkind, wasn’t he?He wasn’t kind, was he? There is a semantic difference between He was unkind and He wasn’t unkind. If He wasn’t kind is false, then He was kind is true. If He was unkind is false, then He was kind could be true or neutral (neither kind or unkind).

Clausal Negation There are two types of clausal negation: verbal and non verbal. Verbal NegationNon Verbal Negation She didn’t tell me anything. She told me nothing. She does not live here any more. She no longer lives here.

Verbal negation The grammatical distinction between verbal and non verbal negation is that verbal negation requires the insertion of dummy auxiliary do under certain conditions, whereas non verbal negation never does.

Conditions for the insertion of dummy do with verbal negation (a)In clauses with a primary verb form PositiveNegative She is lenient with them.She isn’t lenient with them. She rejected his offer.She didn’t reject his offer.

(b) In imperative clauses Imperative clauses with verbal negation always require do: Be lenient with them.Don’t be lenient with them. Reject his offer.Don’t reject his offer.

Non verbal clausal negation Non verbal clausal negation is marked by either not added to a constituent other than a verb or by other words such as nothing, never, few. AdmissibleInadmissible Not everybody agrees with you Not somebody agrees with you Not all of her friends supported her. Not each of her friends supported her Not even Tom liked it.Not Tom liked it.

Other markers of non-verbal negation There are two groups: absolute negators and approximate negators (a)Absolute negators i.no, none, nobody, no one, nothing, nowhere ii.neither, nor, never Nobody objected to her plan. We found no mistakes. Neither Kim nor Pat has arrived. He never apologizes.

Non-Verbal NegationEquivalent Verbal Negation We found no mistakes.We didn’t find any mistakes. There is no one here.There isn’t anyone here. He never apologizes.He doesn’t ever apologize.

Approximate negators Few, little, rarely, seldom, barely, hardly, scarcely Few of them approximates to none of them Rarely approximates to never Hardly spoke approximates to didn’t speak Scarcely any food approximates to no food Few of them realised it was a hoax, did they? He rarely goes to church nowadays, does he? She hardly spoke a word, did she? There’s scarcely any food left, is there?

Non affirmative items A fair number of words or expressions are polarity sensitive in the sense that they occur readily in clauses of one polarity but not of the other. Some (usually) has positive orientation. PositiveNegative I have some objections to make. I don’t have some objections to make.

PositiveNegative *I have any objections to make. I don’t have any objections to make. *positive and declarative Any has negative orientation: it occurs freely in negatives. Have you any objections?Who has any objections to make? Any is admitted in interrogative

Scope of Negation