A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

154 Chapter 8 Negation and related phenomena

Where the negator follows the subject in clausal negation, as in [13ii], there is usu­
ally an equivalent clause with verbal negation:

[1 4] NON-VERBAL NEGATION EQUIVALENT VERBAL NEGATION

a. We found no mistakes. (=[ 13 iia)) b. We didn 't find ill1,)! mistakes.

II a. There is no one here. b. There isn 't anyone here.

III a. He never apologises. (= [ 13 iib)) b. He doesn't ever apologise.

The versions with verbal negation have forms with any, anybody, anyone, etc., in
place of the negators in [12i], and either, or, and ever in place of those in [12ii].

(b) Approximate negators

These are listed in [15], and in [16] we again give examples involving clausal negation:

[ 1 5] fe w, little; rarely, seldom; barely, hardly, scarcely

[1 6] i a. Fe w of them realised it was a hoax.

ii a. She hardly spoke a word all evening.

b. He rarely goes to ch urch nowadays.

b. There 's scarcely any fo od left.

Few of them comes close in meaning to none of them: none indicates absolutely
zero, while fe w puts the number within a small part of the scale down at the end
close to zero. This is why we say it is an approximate negator. In a similar way,
rarely approximates to never; hardly spoke a word approximates to didn't speak a
word; and scarcely any fo od approximates to no food.
Although only approximate semantically, these items largely follow the pattern
of the absolute negators with respect to the tests for clausal negation. In particular,
the confirmation tags for the examples in [16] are those that attach to absolute neg­
ative clauses. For [ia] we have did they?, for [ib] does he?, for [iia] did she?, and for
[iib] is there? Note here the contrast between fe w, which is negative, and a few,
which is positive - witness A few of them realised it was a hoax, didn't they?

4 Non-affirmative items

A fair number of words or larger expressions are polarity-sensitive in
the sense that they occur readily in clauses of one polarity but not of the other.
Compare, for example:

[ 17] POSITIVE

a. I have some objections to make.

II a. *1 have ill1,)! objections to make.

NEGATIVE

b. *1 don 't have some objections to make.

b. I don 't have ill1,)! objections to make.

Some is by no means wholly excluded from negative clauses, but it is subject to

restrictions that do not apply to the positive: we say, therefore, that it has positive

orientation.

Conversely any (in the sense it has here) has negative orientation: it occurs

freely in negatives but is excluded from positives like [iia].