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In
linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...
and
grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...
, affirmation (
abbreviated An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
) and negation () are ways in which grammar encodes positive and negative polarity into
verb phrase In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of a verb and its arguments except the subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause. Thus, in the sentence ''A fat man quickly put the money into the box'', the words ''q ...
s, clauses, or other
utterance In spoken language analysis, an utterance is a continuous piece of speech, often beginning and ending with a clear pause. In the case of oral languages, it is generally, but not always, bounded by silence. Utterances do not exist in written lang ...
s. An affirmative (positive) form is used to express the validity or
truth Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as belie ...
of a basic assertion, while a negative form expresses its falsity. For example, the affirmative sentence "Jane is here" asserts that it is true that Jane is currently located near the speaker. Conversely, the negative sentence "Jane is not here" asserts that it is not true that Jane is currently located near the speaker. The
grammatical category In linguistics, a grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language. Within each category there are two or more possible values (sometimes called grammemes), which are normally mutually exclusiv ...
associated with affirmatives and negatives is called polarity. This means that a clause, sentence, verb phrase, etc. may be said to have either affirmative or negative polarity (its polarity may be either affirmative or negative). Affirmative is typically the unmarked polarity, whereas a negative statement is marked in some way. Negative polarity can be indicated by negating words or
particles In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...
such as the English ''not'', or the
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
affix -''nai'', or by other means, which reverses the meaning of the
predicate Predicate or predication may refer to: * Predicate (grammar), in linguistics * Predication (philosophy) * several closely related uses in mathematics and formal logic: **Predicate (mathematical logic) **Propositional function **Finitary relation, o ...
. The process of converting affirmative to negative is called negation – the grammatical rules for negation vary from language to language, and a given language may have multiple methods of negation. Affirmative and negative responses (specifically, though not exclusively, to questions) are often expressed using particles or words such as ''yes'' and ''no'', where ''yes'' is the affirmative, or positive particle, and ''no'' is the negation, or negative particle.


Basis for affirmation and negation

Affirmation and negation are a crucial building blocks for language. The presence of negation is the absence of affirmation, where affirmation functions individually. There are three main aspects to the concept of affirmation and negation; Cognitive, psychological and
philosophical Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
( Schopenhauers theory or
Nietzschean affirmation Nietzschean affirmation (german: Bejahung) is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. The best example of this concept can be found in Nietzsche's ''The Will to Power'': Opposition to Schopenhauer Walter Kaufmann wrote that Nietzsch ...
).


Cognitive

Negation in English is more difficult for the brain to process as it works in opposition to affirmation. If affirmation and negation were missing from language people would only be able to communicate through possibilities. The recent Reusing Inhibition for Negation (RIN) hypothesis states that there is a specific inhibitory control mechanism (one that is reused) that is needed when trying to understand negation in sentences.


Affirmation


Meaning of affirmation

Affirmations or positive polarity items (PPIs) are expressions that are rejected by negation, usually escaping the scope of negation. PPIs in the literature have been associated with speaker oriented
adverbs An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering que ...
, as well as expressions similar to ''some'', ''already'', and ''would rather''. Affirmative sentences work in opposition to negations. The affirmative, in an English example such as "the police chief here is a woman", declares a simple fact, in this case, it is a fact regarding the police chief and asserts that she is a woman. In contrast, the negative, in an English example such as "the police chief here is not a man", is stated as an assumption for people to believe. It is also widely believed that the affirmative is the
unmarked In linguistics and social sciences, markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked–unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The dominant defau ...
base form from which the negative is produced, but this can be argued when coming from a pragmatic standpoint. Pragmatically, affirmatives can sometimes derive the pragmatically unmarked form, or, at times, create novel affirmative derivatives. Affirmation can also be compared to the notion of assertiveness.


Affirmation in English

Affirmation can be indicated with the following words in English: ''some,'' ''certainly'', ''already,'' and ''would rather.'' Two examples of affirmation include (1) John is here already and (2) I am a moral person. These two sentences are truth statements, and serve as a representation of affirmation in English. The negated versions can be formed as the statements (1NEG) John is not here already and (2NEG) I am not a moral person. :(1) ::a. John is here already (affirmative) ::b. John might be here already (modal) ::c. John is not here already (negative) File:John is here already (affirmative).png, Syntax tree of (1a) John is here already (affirmative) File:John might be here already (modal).png, Syntax tree of (1b) John might be here already (modal) File:John is not here already (negative).png, Syntax tree of (1c) John is not a moral person (negative) (2) ::a. I am a moral person (affirmative) ::b. I might be a moral person (modal) ::c. I am not a moral person (negative) File:I am a moral person (2).png, Syntax tree of (2a) I am a moral person (affirmative) File:I might be a moral person (modal).png, Syntax tree of (2b) I might be a moral person (modal) File:I am not a moral person (negative).png, Syntax tree of (2c) I am not a moral person (negative)


Affirmation in other languages


Dagaare

In
Dagaare Dagaare is the language of the Dagaaba people of Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast. It has been described as a dialect continuum that also includes Waale and Birifor. Dagaare language varies in dialect stemming from other family languages i ...
, there are verbal
suffixes In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry g ...
, such as ''-ng'', that serve as an affirmation or an emphasis to a verbal action. These verbal suffixes are also known as a ''focus'' ''particle'' or a ''factitive marker.'' :(3) ò kyɛ́ng-ɛ́ɛ́-ńg (affirmative) : "S/he has walked" There are also cases of the identifying
pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...
''na'' developing into an affirmative marker. ''na'' is reanalyzed into a clause final particle simultaneously with the denominalisation of the clausal subject which brings the result of ''na'' as a clause nominalising particle which can again be reanalyzed as a positive, future, marker. This clause final particle is known to only be used to mark assertiveness in positive clauses because it is not seen co-occurring with negative markers. :(4) ''ɭ̃'' na cen na (affirmative) : "I will go"


Negation


Meaning of negation

Simple grammatical negation of a clause, in principle, has the effect of converting a proposition to its logical negation. This is done by replacing an assertion that something is the case with an assertion that it is not the case. In some cases, however, particularly when a particular modality is expressed, the semantic effect of negation may be somewhat different. For example, in English, the meaning of "you must not go" is not the exact negation of "you must go". The exact negation of this phrase would be expressed as "you don't have to go" or "you needn't go". The negation "must not" has a stronger meaning (the effect is to apply the logical negation to the following infinitive rather than applying it to the full clause with ''must''). For more details and other similar cases, see the relevant sections of
English modal verbs The English modal verbs are a subset of the English auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality (properties such as possibility, obligation, etc.). They can be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participle ...
. Negation flips
downward entailing In linguistic semantics, a downward entailing (DE) propositional operator is one that constrains the meaning of an expression to a lower number or degree than would be possible without the expression. For example, "not," "nobody," "few people," "at ...
and upward entailing statements within the scope of the negation. For example, changing "one could have seen anything" to "no one could have seen anything" changes the meaning of the last word from "anything" to "nothing". In some cases, by way of irony, an affirmative statement may be intended to have the meaning of the corresponding negative, or vice versa. For examples see antiphrasis and
sarcasm Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection ...
. For the use of double negations or similar as understatements ("not unappealing", "not bad", etc.) see
litotes In rhetoric, litotes (, or ), also known classically as ''antenantiosis'' or ''moderatour'', is a figure of speech and form of verbal irony in which understatement is used to emphasize a point by stating a negative to further affirm a positive, o ...
.


Grammatical rules for negation


Simple negation of verbs and clauses

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 In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from ...
, meaning "not". This may be added before the verb phrase, as with the
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
''no'': :(5) ::a. Está en casa (affirmative) :: "(S)he is at home" ::b. No está en casa (negative) :: "(S)he is not at home" Other examples of negating particles preceding the verb phrase include
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...
''non'',
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
не ''nye'' and Polish ''nie'' (they can also be found in
constructed language A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction ...
s: ''ne'' in Esperanto and ''non'' in
Interlingua Interlingua (; ISO 639 language codes ia, ina) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It ranks among the most widely used IALs and is t ...
). In some other languages the negating particle follows the verb or verb phrase, as in
Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...
: :(6) ::a. Ik zie hem (affirmative) :: "I see him" ::b. Ik zie hem niet (negative) :: "I do not see him" :: 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 Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
(''han hoppade inte'', "he did not jump"). In French, particles are added both before the verb phrase (''ne'') and after the verb (''pas''): :(7) ::a. Je sais (affirmative) :: "I know" ::b. Je (ne) sais pas (negative) :: "I don't know" 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 Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gra ...
: ''Hy kan nie Afrikaans praat nie'' ("He cannot speak Afrikaans"). In English, negation is achieved by adding ''not'' after the verb. As a practical matter, Modern English typically uses a copula verb (a form of ''be'') or an
auxiliary verb An auxiliary verb ( abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a ...
with ''not''. If no other auxiliary verb is present, then dummy auxiliary ''do'' (''does'', ''did'') is normally introduced – see ''do''-support. For example, :(8) ::a. I have gone (affirmative) ::b. I have not gone (negative; ''have'' is the auxiliary) :(9) ::a. He goes (affirmative) ::b. #He goes not (negative) but that wording is considered archaic and is rarely used. It is much more common to use the dummy auxiliary to render *He does not go (since there is no auxiliary in the original sentence) Different rules apply in subjunctive, imperative and non-finite clauses. For more details see . (In
Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old 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
inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...
al suffix, not a clitic or a derivational suffix. Complex rules for negation also apply in
Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...
; see . In some languages negation may also affect the dependents of the verb; for example in some
Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...
, such as Polish, the case of a
direct object In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
often changes from
accusative The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...
to genitive when the verb is negated.


Negation of other elements

Negation can be applied not just to whole verb phrases, clauses or sentences, but also to specific elements (such as
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
s and
noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
s) within sentences. This contrast is usually labeled ''sentential negation'' versus ''constituent negation''. 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
privative A privative, named from Latin '' privare'', "to deprive", is a particle that negates or inverts the value of the stem of the word. In Indo-European languages many privatives are prefixes; but they can also be suffixes, or more independent elements. ...
s.


Multiple negation

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 Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
, "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.


The negative in other languages


Russian

In Russian, all of the elements ("not", "never", "nobody", "nowhere") would appear together in the sentence in their negative form.


Italian

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''.


French

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: :(10) ::a. J''e ne bois jamais'' ("I never drink") ::b. J''e ne vois personne'' ("I see nobody") ::c. J''e n'ai jamais vu personne'' ("I have never seen anybody")


Ancient Greek

In
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
, 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"


Dagaare

In Dagaare, negation is marked specifically by pre-verb particles, where only four, out of the nearly 24 pre-verb particles, are designated as negation markers. The four negation markers are ''ba'', ''kʊ̀ŋ'', ''ta'', and ''tɔ́ɔ́''. To signal negation, as well as other semantic relation, these negation particles combine with different aspects of the verb. These pre-verb negatory particles can also be used to convey tense, mood,
aspect Aspect or Aspects may refer to: Entertainment * ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art * Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company * Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England * ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
, and polarity (negation), and in some cases can be used to convey more than one of these features. For example, the negation marker ''ta'' can be used to indicate polarity and mood: * Ta zo! (Do not run!), indicates negative imperative construction For example, the negation marker ''ba'' can be used as a non-future, or present tense, negative marker: * a mɔnaabʊ ba kʊ a naŋkpaana (The buffalo has not killed the hunter), has ''ba'' used with the perfective A and imperfective A forms of the verb to indicate negation in the present tense


Sign Languages

Various signed and manual languages are known to negate via headshake.


Affirmative and negative responses

Special affirmative and negative words (particles) are often found in responses to questions, and sometimes to other assertions by way of agreement or disagreement. In English, these are ''yes'' and ''no'' respectively, in French ''oui,'' ''si'' and ''non'', in Swedish ''ja'', ''jo'' and ''nej'', in Spanish ''sí'' and ''no'' and so on. Not all languages make such common use of particles of this type; in some (such as Welsh) it is more common to repeat the verb or another part of the predicate, with or without negation accordingly. Complications sometimes arise in the case of responses to negative statements or questions; in some cases the response that confirms a negative statement is the negative particle (as in English: "You're not going out? No."), but in some languages this is reversed. Some languages have a distinct form to answer a negative question, such as French ''si'' and Swedish ''jo'' (these serve to contradict the negative statement suggested by the first speaker).


See also

* De Interpretatione * Jespersen's Cycle * Not! *
Polarity item In linguistics, a polarity item is a lexical item that is associated with affirmation or negation. An affirmation is a positive polarity item, abbreviated PPI or AFF. A negation is a negative polarity item, abbreviated NPI or NEG. The linguisti ...
* Veridicality


References


Further reading

*Laurence R. Horn, ''A Natural History of Negation''. 2001. *Douglas Biber, Susan Conrad, Randi Reppen, "Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Use". 1998. * {{Authority control Grammar Grammatical categories Semantics Truth