The adverb “no”—along with its semantic kindred “not,” “never,” and “without”—is arguably the most subversive word in the English language. “No” undermines and negates every single thought and idea to which it latches on: “
No, I don’t like you.” “
No, I
have never loved you.” Overwhelmingly powerful, “no” very quickly and efficiently demolishes every declarative or affirmative statement that we can think up in the English language.
To negate entire statements, “no” needs a commanding position at the very beginning of sentences: “
No swerving.” “
No, sir, minors aren’t allowed here.” But when “no” has to do the negating inside the statement itself, “not” takes the place of “no” in simple tense constructions, positioning itself between the auxiliary verb and the main verb: “The woman
did not drive.” “The woman
will not drive.” (When “not” does this, the main verb relinquishes the tense to the auxiliary verb.)
The pattern of negation is slightly different in the perfect tenses. The adverb “not” simply inserts itself between the auxiliary verb and the main verb, with the main verb remaining in the past participle form even as the negation is consummated: “That woman
has driven.” “That woman
has not driven.” “That woman
will not have driven.”
In contrast to “not,” “never” is a more movable. See how it works: “That woman
never drives.” “
Never does that woman
drive.” “That woman
has never driven.” “
Never has that woman
driven.” “That woman
never has driven.” “Never” is negation in highly emphatic form—demolishing an idea to the extreme.
The adverbs “no,” “not,” and “never” work in much the same way to totally denote absence, contradiction, denial, or refusal: “
Under no circumstances will Claudia’s offer be accepted.” “I see
no sign of reconciliation.” “Have you
no conscience?” “
Not a single drop of rain fell last summer.” “She will always be a bridesmaid,
never a bride.”
Keep in mind this major caveat on “not” usage: it falters grammatically in statements that have an “all…not” form in the sense of “to the degree expected.” Take this problematic sentence: “All of the women in the district did not vote for the lone female candidate.” It could mean that “
some of the women did not vote for the lone female candidate,” or that “
none of the women voted for the lone female candidate.”
Better to remove the ambiguity by fine-tuning the negation to yield the desired meaning. First option: “
Not all of the women in the district
voted for the lone female candidate.” Second option: “
None of the women in the district
voted for the lone female candidate.”
Apart from using “no,” “not,” and “never,” the lexical semantics of negation and affixal negation can also be used to reverse the sense of things.
Lexical negation is simply the negative structuring of sentences by using words with negative denotations, such as “neither,” “nor,” “rarely,” “hardly,” and “seldom.”
Affixal negation, on the other hand, negates positive words through the use of the affixes “un-”, “im-”/“in-”/“il-”, “dis-”, “de-”, and “-less,” as in “
unnecessary,” “
imperfect,” “
ineffective,” “
illegal,” “
disregard,” “
decamp,” and “use
less.”
When using these negative affixes, however, we must always remember to drop the “no,” “not,” or “never” in the sentence if our true intention is to negate the statement. Failure to do so will result in a grammatically
incorrect double negative. “
It is not illegal to steal,” for instance, will mean exactly its opposite, “
It is legal to steal”—with all its dire consequences to civilized society.
Now that we have explored the various ways of achieving negation, however, we must end with a note of caution: too much negation in prose could invite resistance and hostility from readers and listeners. We’ll take up this dangerous aspect of negation next week.
This essay, 2110th of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the August 4, 2022 digital edition of The Manila Times
, ©2022 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.Read this essay online in
The Manila Times:
Forming negative sentences correctly(Next week:
Avoiding excessive negation in our writing) August 11, 2022
Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
