A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

§3 Clausal negation 151

contains a negative verb-form. The latter clause is of course negative, but the former
is positive, as is evident from the following data:

[5] SUBCLAUSAL NEGATION

a. *He was unkind, not even to me.

ii a. He was unkind, and so was Sue.

iii a. He was unkind, wasn't he?

CLAUSAL NEGATION

b. He wasn't kind, not even to me.

b. He wasn't kind, and neither was Sue.

b. He wasn't kind, was he?

He wasn't kind behaves just like the earlier I haven't read your book: it accepts not

even, takes neither (or nor) as connective, and selects a positive confirmation tag.

He was unkind, by contrast, behaves like the obviously positive I have read your

book: it doesn't accept not even, it does take so as connective, and it selects a

negative tag.

We call the negation in He was unkind subclausal because it works below the level
of the clause.
Notice that there is a semantic difference between He was unkind and He wasn 't
kind. If He wasn 't kind is false, then He was kind must be true; but if He was unkind
is false, it doesn't follow that He was kind is true: he could be neutral, neither kind
nor unkind.

Other cases of subclausal negation

Some further contrasts between subclausal and clausal negation are illustrated in [6]:

[ 6 ]

ii

iii

iv

a.

a.

a.

a.

SUBCLAUSAL NEGATION

She works fo r nothing.

It was no mean achievement.

This is a not uncommon mistake.

Not surprisingly, he complained.

CLAUSAL NEGATION

b. She 's interested in nothing.

b. It was no great deal.

b. This is not an uncommon mistake.

b. Surprisingly, he did not complain.

Again the tests differentiate clearly between the [a] and [b] examples: the right con­

firmation tag for [ia] would be doesn't she?, while the one for lib] would be is she?,

and so on.

Nothing and no generally mark clausal negation. In [ia] and [iia] we have excep­

tional cases where they don't.

The contrast in [iii] is due to the fact that the not in [a] is in an attributive modifier

in NP structure (not uncommon), whereas in [b] the not is modifying the verb is.

In [iva], not modifies surprisingly, and the main predication is positive: "He

complained, which wasn't surprising". In [ivb], by contrast, the negation applies

to complain: "He didn't complain, which was surprising".

3 Clausal negation

Within clausal negation we make a further distinction between verbal

and non-verbal negation: