Definition of Negation Plus Many Helpful Examples

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 nt. 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-. Examples and Observations It was not singing and it was not crying, coming up the stairs.(Faulkner, William. That Evening Sun Go Down, 1931.) I cant remember when I  wasnt singing  out of the house.(Thomas, Irma Talking New Orleans Music,  ed. by  Burt Feintuch. University Press of Mississippi, 2015.) I bet youve never smelled a real school bus before.(Ferris Buellers Day Off, 1986.) I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasnt it.(Groucho Marx) ​Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.(Snicket, Lemony:  Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Cant Avoid, 2007.) I have some rope up here, but I do not think you would accept my help, since I am only waiting around to kill you.(Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, 1987.) No zinc tub, no buckets of stove-heated water, no flaky, stiff, grayish towels washed in a kitchen sink, dried in a dusty backyard, no tangled black puffs of rough wool to comb.(Morrison, Toni.  The Bluest Eye,  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.) She passed a drugstore, a bakery, a shop  of rugs, a funeral parlor, but nowhere was there a sign of a hardware store.(Singer, Isaac Bashevis. The Key,  A Friend of Kafka  and Other Stories,  Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1970.) I had never before heard pure applause in a ballpark. No calling, no whistling, just an ocean of handclaps, minute after minute, burst after burst, crowding and running together in continuous succession like the pushes of surf at the edge of the sand. It was a sombre and considered tumult. There was not a boo in it.(Updike, John.  Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,  1960.) [T]he people of the State of New York cannot allow any individuals within her borders to go  unfed, unclothed, or unsheltered.(New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt, October 1929, quoted by  Herbert Mitgang in  Once Upon a Time in New York,  Cooper Square Press, 2003.) What About Aint? Together with negative concord, aint is perhaps the best-known shibboleth of non-standard English, and this already implies that it is highly stigmatized. Aint is a negative form of unclear historical origin and of very wide usage—both grammatically and geographically. Probably due to a historical coincidence, aint functions as the negative form of both present tense BE and present tense HAVE in non-standard English today.(Anderwald, Lieselotte.  Negation in Non-Standard British English: Gaps, Regularizations, and Asymmetries,  Routledge, 2002.) Boy, have you lost your mind? Cause Ill help you find it. What you looking for, aint nobody gonna help you out there.(Leslie David Baker as Stanley in Take Your Daughter to Work Day, The Office, 2006.) The Position of Not The preferred position for the negator not is after the first word of the auxiliary or after a copula, in a main clause. Under various circumstances, a negator that should properly be placed elsewhere is attracted into this position. Firstly, note that what is here called sentential negation can apply either to a main clause, as in (79), or to a complement clause, as in (80). (79) I didnt say [that he lied] (I said nothing)(80) I said [that he didnt lie] (I said that he told the truth) Here the difference in meaning is significant, and the negator nt is likely to be maintained in its proper place. But consider: (81) I dont think [that he came] (I dont know what he did)(82) I think [that he didnt come] (I think that he stayed away) The sentiment expressed in (81) is not likely to be often expressed, whereas that in (82) is much used. As Jespersen (1909–49, pt. V: 444) mentions, people often say I dont think that he came when they actually mean (82), that he stayed away. This can be accounted for by attraction of nt from the complement clause into the preferred position, after the first word of the auxiliary in the main clause.(Dixon, Robert M.W.  A Semantic Approach to English Grammar,  Oxford University Press, 2005.)