Affirmation and negation

Affirmative is typically the unmarked polarity, whereas a negative statement is marked in some way.

Negation in English is more difficult for the brain to process as it works in opposition to affirmation.

[5] 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.

[5] It is also widely believed that the affirmative is the unmarked base form from which the negative is produced, but this can be argued when coming from a pragmatic standpoint.

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.

For more details and other similar cases, see the relevant sections of English modal verbs.

In some cases, by way of irony, an affirmative statement may be intended to have the meaning of the corresponding negative, or vice versa.

Languages have a variety of grammatical rules for converting affirmative verb phrases or clauses into negative ones.

This may be added before the verb phrase, as with the Spanish no: Other examples of negating particles preceding the verb phrase include Italian non, Russian не nye and Polish nie (they can also be found in constructed languages: ne in Esperanto and non in Interlingua).

It is much more common to use the dummy auxiliary to render Different rules apply in subjunctive, imperative and non-finite clauses.

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".

[9] 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 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.

For example, in Russian, "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").

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.

[11] 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 Danish ja, jo and nej, in Spanish sí and no and so on.