This document discusses negation in syntax. It begins by defining negation as a grammatical construction that contradicts or negates a sentence's meaning. Negation is a universal linguistic category that exists in all languages. The document then discusses three types of negation: sentential negation, which negates the whole clause; constituent negation, which has narrow scope over parts of a sentence; and meta-negation, which has the widest scope above the clause level. The rest of the document provides examples and tests to distinguish between these negation types and establish sentential negation as a key topic.

1. University of Perpetual Help
Graduate School
Las Piñas City, Lucena City Group
Name : Nomerto M. Revilla Jr.
Subject :
Professor : Prof. Roberto Baltazar S. Celebre
Schedule : 8:00- 5:00
Topic : Topic 16- Syntax Negation
Syntax Negation
Negation as a Universal Category
Nordquist (2019), cited that in English grammar, negation is a grammatical construction that
contradicts (or negates) all or part of the meaning of a sentence. Also known as a negative
construction or standard negation.
In standard English, negative clauses and sentences commonly include the negative
particle not or the contracted negative n't. Other negative words include no, none, nothing,
nobody, nowhere, and never.
In many cases, a negative word can be formed by adding the prefix un- to the positive form of a
word (as in unhappy and undecided). Other negative affixes (called negators) include a-, de-,
dis-, in-, -less, and mis-.
“All human systems of communication contain a representation of negation. No animal
communication system includes negative utterances, and consequently none possesses a means
for assigning truth value, for lying, for irony, or for coping with false o r contradictory statements
[…]” (Horn 2001: xiii). That is, negation is a universal linguistic category: All languages have
the concept of negation. Even if the negative operator itself (e.g. English not) is excluded, the
concept of negation is presupposed by many other elements. For example, verbs such as deny
and refuse that take non-interrogative clausal complements and license negative polarity items
(NPI, elements that require a negative, or interrogative, context, such as at all, ever, and
anything) 5, involve negation of alternatives. The same holds for prepositions such as without.
a. He denied that he had done it.
Î He claimed that he had not done it.
b. He refused to do it.
Î He did not do it.
c. You must live without killing.
Î Thou shalt not kill.
Counter-factives, as in (34)a, and irrealis modality predicates, as in (34)b, also presuppose
negation:
(34) a. He pretends that he is a linguist.
Î He is not a linguist.
b. I wish I was rich.
Î am not rich
The conditional complementizer if presupposes that the condition may or may not be true:
(35) If that is true then we are in trouble.
Î It may or may not be true.
Another example is the simple fact that something can be wrong, i.e. not right:

2. (36) Stealing is wrong.
Î Stealing is not right.
Further examples include children playing pretend, irony and sarcasm, lies and deceit,
etc.
Thus, negation is undoubtedly in the language of thought (LOT) and therefore it must
also be in LF, as the feature [Neg], and in turn, therefore also in the syntax and hence, also in
NPIs may also be licensed by non-negative verbs; for example, wonder also licenses
NPIs but it selects an interrogative clause as its object: I wonder [whether he she knew / if she
knew].
the lexicon; recall that the LF representation is derived from a lexical array LA taken from the
lexicon. As universal (functional) categories project (e.g. tense and TP, see Sigurðsson 2003),
there is also a universal NegP. Due to recoverability in interpretation and learnability, at least
one or both of spec-Neg and Negº must be realized overtly (see chapter 2, section 2.4.2) (this is
probably what drives Jespersen’s Cycle, Jespersen 1917; see chapter 3, sections 3.2.5 and 3.2.6).
Smith et al. (1993) has tried to teach Christopher (an autistic man with extraordinary linguistic
abilities in the face of severe mental retardation) an artificial language which they call Epun.
This artificial language does not have a negation marker and thus deviate from the principles of
universal grammar UG. Instead, negation is expressed with word order: In negative clauses the
verb precedes the subject, and past tense is realized by fronting the object:
a. Positive (Present and Future): Subj Verb Obj
b. Positive (Past): Obj Subj Verb
c. Negative (Present and Future): Verb Subj Obj
d. Negative (Past): Obj Verb Subj
Though the system seems fairly simple, neither Christopher nor the normal controls were able to
learn it. On the other hand, this would most likely be easy for an artificial neural network to learn
as it operates on statistics and, unlike human language users, structure-independently. A human
language, i.e. one that satisfies the principles of UG, on the other hand, must have a negation
marker.
Types of Negation
This is a very brief introduction to negation. The point is to establish sentential negation which
will be one of the main topics of this dissertation. For a comprehensive analysis of negation, see
e.g. Horn (2001) and Haegeman (1995).
Basically, I shall argue that there are three different types of negation, namely (i)
sentential negation which is realized in the clausal spine as NegP positioned between FinP and
TP (sentential negation has wide scope: it negates the whole clause); (ii) constituent negation
which has narrow scope (it does not negate the clause, only constituents such as DPs and PPs);
(iii) meta negation which has neither constituent / narrow scope nor sentential / wide scope; It
has scopes over more than the clause, so in a sense it has the widest possible scope. These three
types of negation have different structural positions in the syntactic tree, but sentential negation
is part of the clausal spine; meta-negation is outside or above it, while constituent negation can
be anywhere else, for example below it on a DP object (see e.g. Zanuttini 1997 and Cormack &
Smith 2002 for analyses with multiple NegPs.) The scope of the negative operators is their c-
command domain:

3. Sentential Negation
The scope of negation can be tested with, for example, an opposite truth value test,
positive and negative tags, and negative polarity items.
A negative sentence has the opposite truth value of the corresponding sentence without
negation: If X is true, then the negation of X (¬X) is necessarily false; and if X is false, then ¬X
is necessarily true. For example, if (39)a is true, the (39)b is necessarily false, and vice versa
a. I will not get it right. (Negative: ¬X)
b. I will get it right. (Positive: X)
Opposite truth values is a necessary but not a sufficient condition on sentential negation.
Clauses with opposite truth values need not be a clause (X) and its negated counterpart (¬X).
For example, if (a) is true, then (b) must be false, and vice versa, but the cannot possibly
be described as a clause and it negated counterpart. This becomes even more clear when (c) is
taken into consideration. Only one of the three can be true at a time, but neither (b) or (c) means
the same as (d) which is the real negative counterpart of (a). Furthermore, if (a) is false and (d) is
true, it does not necessarily follow that either (b) or c are true; a, b, and c may all be false at the
same time.
a. Gunnar is in Oslo.
b. Gunnar is in Baghdad.
c. Gunnar is in Sweden.
d. Gunnar is not in Oslo
Negative sentences take positive tag-questions, such as will I? or negative elliptic
conjuncts, such as and neither will you, as in (a) and (a), respectively, while such tags are
incompatible with positive polarity, as in (b) and (b):
a. I will not get it right, will I? (Negative)
b. *I will get it right, will I? (Positive)
(42) a. I will not get it right, and neither will you. (Negative)
b. *I will get it right, and neither will you. (Positive)
Likewise, positive sentences take negative tag-questions, such as won’t I? or positive elliptic
conjuncts, such as and so will you, while such tags are incompatible with negative polarity:
(43) a. *I will not get it right, won’t I? (Negative)

4. b. I will get it right, won’t I? (Positive)
(44) a. *I will not get it right, and so will you. (Negative)
b. I will get it right, and so will you. (Positive)
Furthermore, negative sentences take negative polarity items (NPIs):
(45) a. I will not get it right at all. (Negative)
b. *I will get it right at all. (Positive)
Like the opposite truth values test, NPI licensing is a necessary but not sufficient condition, as
NPIs can be licensed in interrogative contexts as well, regardless of polarity:
(46) a. Will I not get it right at all? (Negative)
b. Will I get it right at all? (Positive)
To summarize, a negative sentence (i) is the counterpart of the same sentence without
negation, (ii) takes positive tag-questions (will I?) and negative conjuncts (and neither…), and
(ii) disallows negative tag-questions (won’t I?) and positive conjuncts (and so…), and (iv) allows
negative polarity items (NPIs).
Constituent Negation
Constituent negation has narrow scope compared to the wide scope of sentential
negation; it scopes over e.g. an NP, an AdvP, a small clause or a VP:
a. With [not [NP too many errors]], this should work. (NP)
b. [Not [AdvP long ago]], Arnold spoke German. (AdvP)
c. [Not [SC making it in time]] is really irritating. (Small clause)
d. I shall [not [VP author a book]], but write an essay (VP)
Constituent negation fails in all the tests that sentential negation passed, and passes the
ones sentential negation failed.
A clause with constituent negation does not have the opposite truth value of the
corresponding clause without negation: (a) is not incompatible with (b) and they can both be true
at the same time. The true negative counterpart of (a) is (c).
a. Not long ago, Arnold spoke German. (Constituent negation)
b. Long ago, Arnold spoke German. (Positive)
c. Not long ago, Arnold didn’t speak German. (Sentential negation)
Constituent negation does not license negative tags, neither positive tag-questions, as in
(a), nor negative tag-clauses, as in (b). This means that the negative operator clearly does not
scope over the clause.
a. *Not long ago, Arnold spoke German, did he?
b. *Not long ago, Arnold spoke German, and neither did I.
In contrast, constituent negation is compatible with positive tags, both negative tag
questions, as in (a), and positive tag-clauses, as in (b). Again, this is a strong indication that the
clause as such is not negative.
a. Not long ago, Arnold spoke German, didn’t he?

5. b. Not long ago, Arnold spoke German, and so did I.
Finally, unlike negation with sentential scope, constituent negation does not license NPIs:
(51) a. *Not long ago, Arnold spoke German at all.
b. *Not long ago, Arnold spoke German in any way.
Meta-negation
As stated above, meta-negation has a wider scope than the wide scope of sentential negation.
Meta-negation is not the same as sentential negation. It selects a CP (which can be either
declarative, as in (a) and (a), or interrogative, as in (b) and (b) or a PP, (c) and (c), not a TP or
even a FinP, as in (d) and (d):
En: a. [Not [CP that it would do any good]]
b. [Not [CP if I can help it]]
c. [Not [PP in this life]]
d. *[Not [FinP John left]]
(53) Da: a. [Ikke [CP at det ikke nytter noget]] Not that it not is.of.use any “Not that it
doesn’t help.”
b. [Ikke [CP om jeg gider at høre mere om det]] Not if I bother to hear more
about it “I simply don’t want to hear more about it”
c. [Ikke [PP på vilkår]] Not on conditions “Under no circumstances!”
d. *[Ikke [FinP Peter gik]] Not Peter left
Note that it selects a subordinate clause. This is particularly clear in the Danish examples
because the embedded word order is different from the one in main clauses. Finite verbs move to
Cº (second position) in main clauses but remain in situ in embedded clauses and thus follow
sentential adverbials and negation. Meta-negation cannot be fronted/topicalized sentential
negation because
(i) topicalization only takes place in (matrix and embedded) main clauses, and
(ii) because topicalization of negation is otherwise impossible in Danish and English.
(54) a. En: *Not have I done that.
b. Da: *Ikke har jeg gjort det.
Interestingly though, meta-negation passes the tests for sentential negation and fails the tests for
positive polarity:
(55) En: [Not [CP that I trust them]]
a. • I trust them (Opposite truth value)
b. … would I? (Positive interrogative tag)
c. … *wouldn’t I? (Negative interrogative tag)
d. … but neither do you. (Negative declarative tag)
e. … *but so do you. (Positive declarative tag)
f. … in any way at all. (Licenses NPI)

6. Further evidence for the special status of meta-negation is the fact that it cannot be a
complement clause, cf. (a); it can only be a parenthetical adjunct as in ( b).
En: a. *He believed [not that he could trust them] (Meta-neg)
b. He believed that he could not trust them (Sentential neg.)
GENERALIZATIONS
Negation is the process of changing a positive sentence into its negative.
This is formed through adding word “not” after the first auxiliary verb in the sentence. As a
review, the auxiliary verbs in English are:
Do Have am shall
Does Has is must
Did had are might
was Can
were will
wound
Negation can be applied to all verb tenses that we have.
Remember, when we do not have an auxiliary verb in the sentence, we add the auxiliary verbs
do, does or did.
Example 1:
Tense Positive Negative
Present Simple I play tennis I do not (don’t) play tennis
Past Simple I played tennis I did not (didn’t) play tennis
Future Simple I will play tennis I will not (won’t) play tennis
I am going to play tennis I am not going to play tennis
Present Progressive I am playing tennis I am not playing tennis
Past Progressive I was playing tennis I was not (wasn’t) playing
tennis
I will be playing tennis I will not (won’t) be playing
tennis
Future Progressive I am going to be playing
tennis
I am not going to be playing
tennis
Present Perfect I have played tennis I have not (haven’t) played
tennis
Past Perfect I had played tennis I had not (hadn’t) played
tennis
Future Perfect I will have played tennis I will not (won’t) have played
tennis
Present Perfect Progressive I have been playing tennis I have not (haven’t) been
playing tennis
Past Perfect Progressive I had been playing tennis I had not (hadn’t) been
playing tennis
Future Perfect Progressive I will have been playing tennis I will not (won’t) have been
playing tennis
Exercise 1: Change the given affirmative sentences into negative ones.
Affirmative Negative
You must study your lessons You must not (mustn’t) study your lessons
I had been to Canada I had not (hadn’t) been to Canada
She will be visiting an old friend She will not (won’t) be visiting an old friend
We can attend practice tomorrow We cannot (can’t) attend practice
tomorrow.
She has a beautiful garden She does not (doesn’t) have a beautiful
garden
They were having breakfast They were not (weren’t) having breakfast

7. References:
http://services.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/grammar-and-
syntax/syntax-negation?format=AR
Christensen (2005). Interfaces Negation – Syntax – Brain.
The Department of English, University of Aarhus The MR Research Centre,
Aarhus University Hospital Ph.D. dissertation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNNqkZ1JzkE