Examples of negative sentences in English

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Examples of negative sentences in English

The English language admits the possibility of expressing ideas by affirming something or denying the opposite. For this he uses grammatical constructions denoting negation, and quite simply a sentence that a priori is declarative and that communicates something in a positive way can be modified in such a way that it indicates the same or almost the same in a negative way.

Sentences with verbal negation typically require auxiliary verbs to do / to be / to have, and are constructed in a similar way to the interrogatives, but mentioning the person pronoun first and then the auxiliary, which will have the ending “n´t” (aren't, isn't, don´t, doesn´t , didn´t), all these forms contracted from the negative “not”. In the future there is a major change: “will” becomes “will not” or “won´t”.

When it comes to negative sentences due to negative nonverbal structures, these are typically appear in the subject with negative pronouns, although they can also affect the verb in the form of adverbs or direct objects.

Pronouns like 'nobody', 'no one' or 'nothing' make an affirmative sentence turn negative: ‘Nobody has seen him’ means ‘nobody has seen him’. In the same way, a positive sentence like ‘I have seen him’ (I have seen him) becomes negative when it is transformed into ‘I have never seen him’ (I have never seen him).

Finally, saying 'they know' means 'they know', but adding 'they know' to it nothing ' means 'they don't know anything', transforming it also into negative. It is interesting to note that double negative is not used in English, which is used in certain cases in Spanish (for example: No one came to the conference).