Negation in languages
From UniLang Wiki
This page is meant to be a general overview page and a kind of summary about how various languages make use of negation in language. Another main function will be to provide links to more detailed pages in the corresponding language sections.
You can also discuss the content of this page by going to the talk page (click on Discuss this page).
Forming negative sentences (simple examples)
English cannot simply negate the verb, it uses the auxiliary verb to do and not before the verb, together with the infinitive of the verb to be negated.
- English: I go. - I do not go.
In other tenses not the action verb changes tense, but the do. E.g. past tense: I did not go.
Languages like Chinese, Spanish, and Russian also place the negative marker before the verb:
- Chinese: 我去。- 我�去.
- Greek: θά πάω (tha pao) - δεν θά πάω (den tha pao)
- Spanish: Yo voy. - Yo no voy.
- Russian: Я иду. - Я не иду.
- Italian: Io vado. - Io non vado.
Other languages add the negative marker after the verb.
- German: Ich gehe. - Ich gehe nicht.
- Swedish Jag går. - Jag går inte.
- Faroese: Eg fari. - Eg fari ikki.
French even uses a double construction, surrounding the verb:
- French: Je vais. - Je ne vais pas.
Agglutinative languages tend to inflect the verb to show it is in the negative, e.g:
- Japanese: è¡Œã??ã?¾ã?™ - è¡Œã??ã?¾ã?›ã‚“ (ikimasu/ikimasen = go/not go in polite form)
In this case one doesn't have to worry about word order.
In some languages, such as Finnish or Turkish the negative marker is inflected according to person, while the verb always remains in a (usually) neutral form.
- Finnish I: Menen - En mene.
- Finnish you: Menet. - Et mene.
- Finnish we: Menemme. - Emme mene.
- Turkish I: Gelirim - Gelmem
- Turkish We: Geliriz - Gelmeyiz
- Turkish You: Gelirsin - Gelmezsin
- Turkish They: Gelirler - Gelmezler
- Turkish He-She-It: Gelir - Gelmez
Answering negative questions
- You aren't tired, are you?.
In the case that you aren't tired, but wide awake, depending on which language you speak you would have to answer either with "yes" or "no".
In English you would have to answer with "No", or "No, I am not", in other languages, such as Japanese, you would have to answer with the equivalent of "Yes". For example:
- 疲れ����？ (Tsukaretenai no?) - Aren't you tired?
- ���疲れ��� (Hai, tsukaretenai) - Yes, not tired.
Some languages, such as French, Faroese, Danish or German, have a word for "yes" ("si" in French, "jú" in Faroese, "jo" in Danish "doch" in German) that is to be used specifically for answering "yes" to a negative question.
Double negation
Some languages, such as Russian, Portuguese, Spanish or Italian make use of double (or multiple) negation.
For example in English one would say
- Nor has anyone ever said anything to anyone.
But for example in Portuguese:
- Nem nunca ninguém disse nada a ninguém
which literally would be
- Nor has no-one never said nothing to no-one.
The same multiple negation holds in Russian:
- И никто никому никогда ничего не говорил.
Bulgarian also negates everything:
- И никой на никого нищо никога не е казвал.
On the other hand the very same sentence could be expressed using 'нито' ('nor') without negating anything else (as in English):
- Ð?ито нÑ?кой на нÑ?кого нещо нÑ?кога е казвал.
which literary is
- Nor someone to someone something ever has said.
In German there would only be one negation again:
- Noch hat jemand jemals irgendetwas zu jemandem gesagt.
In Esperanto, there is only one negation as well:
- Nek iu diris ion iam al iu.
So it seems that romance and slavic languages make use of multiple negation while germanic languages only use single negation.
What about other language families?
