ENGLISH MORPHOSYNTAX
Negation in Modern English
Negation in Modern English
• Brief reference to the polarity system.
• Importance of negation.
- Universal category.
- Connection with several other fields such as
Philosophy, Mathematics, Logic, etc
- Present at all levels of the language.
• Overall frequency of negation in written and
spoken English.
Negatives: Main types
• Clause negation:
Syntactic features of clause negation
- Followed by positive question tags
(1) He doesn’t work here, does he?
- Followed by negative clauses with additive
meaning
(2) I haven’t watched that film, neither have
you.
Clause negation
- In discourse they are followed by negative
agreement responses:
(3) She doesn’t speak German.
No, she doesn’t.
- They are followed by non-assertive items.
(4) They didn’t give us any advice.
Clause negation Types
- Not negation vs. No negation
(5a) I saw nobody. (no negation)
(5b) I didn’t see anybody. (not negation)
(6a) They went nowhere. (no negation)
(6b) They didn’t go anywhere. (not negation)
(7a) She has got no money. (no negation)
(7b) She hasn’t got any money. (not negation)
Negatives
• Local, constituent or subclausal negation
(8) I saw them not a long time ago.
(9) It is a car with no wheels.
• Predication negation (with some modal verbs)
(10) They may not be on time.
• Affixal or morphological negation
(11) I disagree with you.
(12) She felt quite unhappy.
Negatives
• Double/multiple negation
(13) I didn’t see nobody nowhere.
(14) Manchester United is not an unbeatable
team.
• Transported/transferred negation/negative
raising
(15) We don’t think she is coming.
Negative Idioms
(16) They didn’t sleep a wink last night. The
baby was crying all the time.
(17) When he had the accident, he said he had
not drunk a drop of alcohol.
(18) They don’t care a bit/pea/fig about that.
(19) Tony didn’t lift a finger to help me.
(20) He was motionless. He didn’t move a
muscle.
