Negation (rhetoric) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

In rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

, where the role of the interpreter

Interpreting

Language interpretation is the facilitating of oral or sign-language communication, either simultaneously or consecutively, between users of different languages...

is taken into consideration as a non-negligible factor, negation bears a much wider range of functions and meanings than it does in logic

Logic

In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

, where the interpretation of signs for negation is constrained by axioms to a few standard options, typically just the classical definition and a few schemes of intuitionism. Recent studies explore the relationship between the representation of the world in the brain and negation, in particular sentential negation.

Grammar

In grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

, negation is the process that turns an affirmative statement (I am Australian) into its opposite denial (I am not Australian). The linguist D. Biber refers to two types of negation, synthetic ('no', 'neither' or 'nor' negation) and analytic ('not' negation). For example, "He is neither here nor there" (synthetic) or "He is not here" (analytic). Noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

s as well as verb

Verb

A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

s can be grammatically negated, by the use of a negative adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

(There is no chicken), a negative pronoun

Pronoun

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...

(Nobody is American here), or a negative adverb

Adverb

An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....

(I never was American).

In English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, negation for most verbs other than be and have, or verb phrase

Verb phrase

In linguistics, a verb phrase or VP is a syntactic unit composed of at least one verb and the dependents of that verb. One can distinguish between two types of VPs, finite VPs and non-finite VPs . While phrase structure grammars acknowledge both, dependency grammars reject the existence of a...

s in which be, have or do already occur, requires the recasting of the sentence using the dummy auxiliary verb

Auxiliary verb

In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...

do, which adds little to the meaning of the negative phrase, but serves as a place to attach the negative particles not, or its contracted form -n't, to:

I have a chicken.
I haven't a chicken. (Rare, but it is still possible to negate have without the auxiliary do.)
I don't have a chicken. (The most common way in contemporary English.)

In Middle English

Middle English

Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....

, the particle not could be attached to any verb:

I see not the chicken.

In Modern English

Modern English

Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, completed in roughly 1550.Despite some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern...

, these forms fell out of use, and the use of an auxiliary verb

Auxiliary verb

such as do or be is obligatory in most cases:

I do not see the chicken.
I have not seen the chicken.

The verb do also follows this rule, and therefore requires a second instance of itself in order to be marked for negation:

The chicken doesn't do tricks

not

**The chicken doesn't tricks.

In English, as in most other Germanic languages

Germanic languages

The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...

(and many non-Germanic languages), the use of double negative

Double negative

A double negative occurs when two forms of negation are used in the same sentence. Multiple negation is the more general term referring to the occurrence of more than one negative in a clause....

s as grammatical intensifiers was formerly in frequent use:

We don't have no chickens here.

Usage prescriptivists consider this use of double negatives to be a solecism

Solecism

In traditional prescriptive grammar, a solecism is something perceived as a grammatical mistake or absurdity, or even a simply non-standard usage. The word was originally used by the Greeks for what they perceived as mistakes in their language...

, and condemn it. It makes the rhetoric

Rhetoric

al figure of litotes

Litotes

In rhetoric, litotes is a figure of speech in which understatement is employed for rhetorical effect when an idea is expressed by a denial of its opposite, principally via double negatives....

ambiguous. It remains common in colloquial English. In Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

, a simple negative (οὐ or μὴ) following another simple or compound negative (e.g., οὐδείς, no one) results in an affirmation, whereas a compound negative following a simple or compound negative strengthens the negation.

οὐδείς οὐκ ἔπασχε τι, everyone was suffering, literally no one was not suffering something.

μὴ θορυβήσῃ μηδείς, let no one raise an uproar, literally do not let no one raise an uproar.

Other languages have simpler forms of negation; in Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, simple negation is a matter of adding the negative particles non or ne to the verb. In French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, the most basic form of verb negation involves adding the circumflexion ne ... pas to the main verb or its auxiliary; je veux un poulet ("I want a chicken"); je ne veux pas un poulet ("I do not want a chicken") / je ne veux pas de poulet ("I do not want any chicken").

Philologically, from the Latin non: no, not indeed, a categoric negative root concept found in languages, even if in different forms. "Not that I know of", expressive of categoric negative assertion, egotistic, defensive, cognitive. Also a negative prefix to concepts, especially as expressed in L. nihil, Eng. emphatic no, definitively not. L. nemo is person oriented, and opposite to L. nihil and means no man, nobody. ne hemo (old form) = no man (homo). Nihil, no + thing, nothing is thing oriented, opposite to nemo. L. nullus means no, not, none (of all those or anything involved). ne ullus = not any one, where unulus is the diminutive of unus, one. Both person and thing oriented, where emphasis is on insignificance. None has ever been so - emphatic, person oriented expression, emphasis being here also denoted by ever (L. aevum, Gr. aion} which here really means: No (one + ever) has been.

Grammar

Further reading