Affirmation and negation

Languages have a variety of grammatical rules for converting affirmative verb phrases or clauses into negative ones.

In many languages, an affirmative is made negative by the addition of a particle, meaning "not". This may be added before the verb phrase, as with the Spanish no:

• Está en casa. ("(S)he is at home", affirmative)
• No está en casa. ("(S)he is not at home", negative)

Other examples of negating particles preceding the verb phrase include Italian non, Russian не nye and Polish nie (they can also be found in constructed languages: ne in Esperanto and non in Interlingua). In some other languages the negating particle follows the verb or verb phrase, as in Dutch:

• Ik zie hem. ("I see him", affirmative)
• Ik zie hem niet. ("I do not see him", negative)

Particles following the verb in this way include not in archaic and dialectal English ("you remember not"), nicht in German (ich schlafe nicht, "I am not sleeping"), and inte in Swedish (han hoppade inte, "he did not jump").

In French, particles are added both before the verb phrase (ne) and after the verb (pas):

• Je sais ("I know", affirmative)
• Je (ne) sais pas, J'sais pas, Chais pas ("I don't know", negative).

However, in colloquial French the first particle is often omitted: Je sais pas. Similar use of two negating particles can also be found in Afrikaans: Hy kan nie Afrikaans praat nie ("He cannot speak Afrikaans").

In standard Modern English, negation is achieved by adding not after an auxiliary verb (which here means one of a special grammatical class of verbs that also includes forms of the copula be; see English auxiliaries). If no such verb is present then the dummy auxiliary do (does, did) is introduced – see do-support. For example:

• I have gone → I have not gone (have is the auxiliary)
• He goes → He does not go (no auxiliary in the original sentence)

Different rules apply in subjunctive, imperative and non-finite clauses. For more details see English grammar § Negation. (In Middle English, the particle not could follow any verb, e.g. "I see not the horse.")

In some languages, like Welsh, verbs have special inflections to be used in negative clauses. (In some language families, this may lead to reference to a negative mood.) An example is Japanese, which conjugates verbs in the negative after adding the suffix -nai (indicating negation), e.g. taberu ("eat") and tabenai ("do not eat"). It could be argued that English has joined the ranks of these languages, since negation requires the use of an auxiliary verb and a distinct syntax in most cases; the form of the basic verb can change on negation, as in "he sings" vs. "he doesn't sing". Zwicky and Pullum have shown that n't is an inflectional suffix, not a clitic or a derivational suffix.[1]

Complex rules for negation also apply in Finnish; see Finnish grammar § Negation of verbs. In some languages negation may also affect the dependents of the verb; for example in some Slavic languages, such as Polish, the case of a direct object often changes from accusative to genitive when the verb is negated.

Negation can be applied not just to whole verb phrases, clauses or sentences, but also to specific elements (such as adjectives and noun phrases) within sentences.[2] This contrast is usually labeled sentential negation versus constituent negation.[3] Ways in which this constituent negation is realized depends on the grammar of the language in question. English generally places not before the negated element, as in "I witnessed not a debate, but a war." There are also negating affixes, such as the English prefixes non-, un-, in-, etc. Such elements are called privatives.

There also exist elements which carry a specialized negative meaning, including pronouns such as nobody, none and nothing, determiners such as no (as in "no apples"), and adverbs such as never, no longer and nowhere.

Although such elements themselves have negative force, in some languages a clause in which they appear is additionally marked for ordinary negation. For example, in Russian, "I see nobody" is expressed as я никого́ не ви́жу ja nikovó nye vízhu, literally "I nobody not see" – the ordinary negating particle не nye ("not") is used in addition to the negative pronoun никого́ nikovó ("nobody"). Italian behaves in a similar way: Non ti vede nessuno, "nobody can see you", although Nessuno ti vede is also a possible clause with exactly the same meaning.

In Russian, all of the elements ("not", "never", "nobody", "nowhere") would appear together in the sentence in their negative form. In Italian, a clause works much as in Russian, but non does not have to be there, and can be there only before the verb if it precedes all other negative elements: Tu non porti mai nessuno da nessuna parte. "Nobody ever brings you anything here", however, could be translated Nessuno qui ti porta mai niente or Qui non ti porta mai niente nessuno. In French, where simple negation is performed using ne ... pas (see above), specialized negatives appear in combination with the first particle (ne), but pas is omitted:

• Je ne bois jamais ("I never drink")
• Je ne vois personne ("I see nobody")
• Je n'ai jamais vu personne ("I have never seen anybody")

In Ancient Greek, a simple negative (οὐ ou "not" or μή mḗ "not (modal)") following another simple or compound negative (e.g. οὐδείς oudeís "nobody") results in an affirmation, whereas a compound negative following a simple or compound negative strengthens the negation:

• οὐδεὶς οὐκ ἔπασχέ τι oudeìs ouk épaskhé ti, "nobody was not suffering something", i.e. "everybody was suffering"
• μὴ θορυβήσῃ μηδείς mḕ thorubḗsēi mēdeís, "let (not) nobody raise an uproar", meaning "let nobody raise an uproar"