Chapter 8.

Negation and related phenomena

☺ Negative and positive clauses

☺ Subclausal negation
☺ Clausal negation
☺ Non-affirmative items
☺ Scope of negation

Advanced English Grammar (2) 1

▪ Negative and positive clauses

• Negation is marked by individual words (such as not, no, never) or by affixes within a word
(such as –n’t, un-, non-, -less).

[1] a. He has signed the agreement. b. He hasn’t signed the agreement.

• The grammatical system in which positive and negative contrast is called polarity: clause (a)
has positive polarity, while (b) has negative polarity.

• Positive and negative clauses (like (a) and (b)) differ from each other semantically and
syntactically.

Advanced English Grammar (2) 2

(a) Addition of not even

[2] i. *I have read your book, not even the introduction.

ii. I haven’t read your book, not even the introduction.
ii’. I haven’t read your book, even the introduction.

(b) The connective adjuncts so and neither or nor

[3] i. I have read your book, and so have my students.

ii. I haven’t read your book, and neither have my students.

[3]’ i. *I have read your book and neither have my students.

ii. *I haven’t read your book and so have my students.

Advanced English Grammar (2) 3

(c) Confirmatory tag

• A common device for seeking confirmation of what one says is to add a truncated interrogative
clause known as a tag.
• It generally consists of just an auxiliary verb + personal pronoun subject, and its polarity is the
reverse of that of the clause to which it is attached:

[4] i. The have read my book, haven’t they?

ii. They haven’t read my book, have they?

• Constant polarity tags suggest an attitude such as surprise, disbelief, disapproval or the like:

[4]’ i. So they’ve read my book, have they? Amazing!

ii. %So they haven’t read my book, haven’t they?

Advanced English Grammar (2) 4

▪ Subclausal negation

• When a negative element doesn’t make the clause containing it negative, the
negation is called subclausal, because it works below the level of the clause.

(a) Affixal negation

• The most obvious case is where the negative element is an affix other than the n’t that
appears on auxiliary verbs.

e.g. dislike, inattentive, non-negotiable, unwilling, homeless….

Advanced English Grammar (2) 5

[5] SUBCLAUSAL NEGATION CLAUSAL NEGATION
i. a. *He was unkind, not even to me. b. He wasn’t kind, not even to me.
ii. a. He was unkind, and so was Sue. b. He wasn’t kind, and neither was Sue.
iii. a. He was unkind, wasn’t he? b. He wasn’t kind, was he?

• He was unkind behaves like the positive, while He wasn’t kind behaves just like the
negative.

• There is also a semantic difference between He was unkind and He wasn’t kind.

• We call the negation in He was unkind subclausal because it works below the level of
the clause.

Advanced English Grammar (2) 6

(b) Other cases of subclausal negation

[6] SUBCLAUSAL NEGATION CLAUSAL NEGATION

i. a. She works for nothing. b. She’s interested in nothing.
ii. a. It was no mean achievement. b. It was no great deal.
iii. a. This is not a uncommon mistake. b. This is not an uncommon mistake.

• Nothing and no generally mark clausal negation, but (ia) and (iia) show us exceptional cases
where they don’t:

[6]’ a. She works for nothing, doesn’t she? b. She’s interested in nothing, is she?

• Not in (iiia) is an attributive modifier in NP; not in (iiib) is modifying the verb is.

Advanced English Grammar (2) 7

▪ Clausal negation

• Within clausal negation we make a further distinction between verbal and non-
verbal negation.

[7] VERBAL NEGATION NON-VERBAL NEGATION

i. a. She didn’t tell me anything. b. She told me nothing.
ii. a. She does not live here any more. b. She no longer lives here.

• Verbal negation requires the insertion of the dummy auxiliary do under certain conditions
(such as in (ia) and (iia)), where as non-verbal negation never does (as shown in (ib) and (iib)).

Advanced English Grammar (2) 8

❖ Verbal negation
• Conditions for the insertion of dummy do with verbal negation
(a) In clauses with a primary verb-form

[8] i. a. She is lenient with them. b. She isn’t lenient with them.
ii. a. She rejected his offer. b. She didn’t reject his offer.

(b) In imperative clauses

• Imperative clauses with verbal negation always require do:

[9] i. a. Be lenient with them. b. Don’t be lenient with them.

ii. a. Reject his offer. b. Don’t reject his offer.

Advanced English Grammar (2) 9

❖ Non-verbal clausal negation
• Non-verbal clausal negation is marked by either by not modifying a constituent other
than a verb, or else by various negative words that are not used for verbal negation:
nothing, never, few, etc.

• Not as a marker of non-verbal negation: the use of not as a modifier

[11] ADMISSIBLE INADMISSIBLE

i. a. Not everybody agrees with you. b. *Not somebody agrees with you.
ii. a. Not all her friends supported her. b. *Not each of her friends supported her.
iii. a. Not even Tom liked it. b. *Not Tom liked it.

[11]’ Not everybody agrees with you, do they?

Advanced English Grammar (2) 10

• Other markers of non-verbal negation

(a) Absolute negators: no, none, nobody, nothing, neither…

NON-VERBAL NEGATION EQUIVALENT VERBAL NEGATION

[14] i. a. We found no mistakes. b. We didn’t find any mistakes.
ii. b. He never apologizes. b. He doesn’t ever apologize.

(b) Approximate negators: few, little, rarely, seldom, hardly, scarcely…

[15] a. Few of them realized that it was a hoax. + did they?

b. She hardly spoke a word all evening. + did she?

a’. A few of them realized it was a hoax, didn’t they?

Advanced English Grammar (2) 11

▪ Non-affirmative items
• A fair number of words or larger expressions are polarity-sensitive in the sense that they
occur readily in clauses of one polarity but of the other.
• Some has positive orientation, and any has negative orientation.

[17] POSITIVE NEGATIVE

i. a. I have some objections to make. b. *I don’t have some objections to make.
ii. a. *I have any objections to make. b. I don’t have any objections to make.

[18] INTERROGATIVE
a. Have you any objections to make?
b. Who has any objections to make?

• Therefore, we refer to items like any as non-affirmatives.

Advanced English Grammar (2) 12

• In general, the restriction on non-affirmative items is that they cannot occur in clauses that are
both declarative and positive.
• Some items (such as anybody, either, ever, need and dare) are non-affirmative only in certain
senses or uses.

[20] NON-AFFIRMATIVE NOT POLARITY-SENSITIVE

i. a. Did you see anybody? b. Anybody can make promises.
ii. a. I didn’t see either of them. b. Either version would do.
iii. a. Will it ever end? b. It will last for ever.
iv. a. She needn’t go. b. She doesn’t need to go.
v. a. I daren’t tell anyone. b. I didn’t dare to tell anyone.

[21] We slipped away without anyone noticing.

[20]’ i. a. . b. .
ii. a. . b. .

[21]’ .
Advanced English Grammar (2) 13
▪ Scope of negation

• The scope of negation is the part of the sentence that the negative applies to semantically.

[23]
NEGATION HAS SCOPE OVER MANY MANY HAS SCOPE OVER NEGATION
a. Not many people believed him. b. Many people didn’t believe him.

• In (a) the negation applies to many: “the number of people who believed him was not large”.
• In (b) the negation does not apply to many. It can be paraphrased : There were many people
[who didn’t believe him].

Advanced English Grammar (2) 14

[24]
i. a. I didn’t omit my name deliberately. b. I deliberately didn’t omit my name.
ii. a. You needn’t tell anyone about it. b. You mustn’t tell anyone about it.

• In (ia) the negation has scope over the adjunct deliberately: omitting my name was not
something I made a point of doing - “I omitted my name and it is not deliberate.”
• In (ib) deliberately has scope over the negation, and it can be paraphrased: I deliberately
chose [not to omit my name].

• In (ii) the modal auxiliaries need and must both expresses deontic necessity, but the negation
scope is different between (a) and (b).
• (iia) means “It isn’t necessary for you to tell anyone about it”.
• (iib) means “It is necessary that you not tell anyone about it”: You are required [not to tell
anyone about it].

Advanced English Grammar (2) 15

• There is a significant degree of correlation between semantic scope and grammatical order.

• Very often, a negative element has scope over what follows but is within the scope of
elements that precede. This tendency is exemplified in (23) and (24i).

• Note, however, that there is no difference in grammatical structure between (24iia) and (24iib),
although they differ in the negation scope. Here, the scope difference is due to specific
properties of the modal auxiliaries must and need.

• Thus, we can see that the correlation between semantic scope and grammatical order is only
partial.

Advanced English Grammar (2) 16