Concept
Affirmation and negation
Related concepts (16)
Double negative
A double negative is a construction occurring when two forms of grammatical negation are used in the same sentence. This is typically used to convey a different shade of meaning from a strictly positive sentence ("You're not unattractive" vs "You're attractive"). Multiple negation is the more general term referring to the occurrence of more than one negative in a clause. In some languages, double negatives cancel one another and produce an affirmative; in other languages, doubled negatives intensify the negation.
Polarity item
In linguistics, a polarity item is a lexical item that is associated with affirmation or negation. An affirmation is a positive polarity item, abbreviated PPI or AFF. A negation is a negative polarity item, abbreviated NPI or NEG. The linguistic environment in which a polarity item appears is a licensing context. In the simplest case, an affirmative statement provides a licensing context for a PPI, while negation provides a licensing context for an NPI.
Nominalization
In linguistics, nominalization or nominalisation is the use of a word that is not a noun (e.g., a verb, an adjective or an adverb) as a noun, or as the head of a noun phrase. This change in functional category can occur through morphological transformation, but it does not always. Nominalization can refer, for instance, to the process of producing a noun from another part of speech by adding a derivational affix (e.g., the noun legalization from the verb legalize), but it can also refer to the complex noun that is formed as a result.
Tense–aspect–mood
Tense–aspect–mood (commonly abbreviated ) or tense–modality–aspect (abbreviated as ) is a group of that are important to understanding spoken or written content, and which are marked in different ways by different languages. TAM covers the expression of three major components of words which lead to or assist in the correct understanding of the speaker's meaning: Tense—the position of the state or action in time, that is, whether it is in the past, present or future.
Epistemic modality
Epistemic modality is a sub-type of linguistic modality that encompasses knowledge, belief, or credence in a proposition. Epistemic modality is exemplified by the English modals may, might, must. However, it occurs cross-linguistically, encoded in a wide variety of lexical items and grammatical structures. Epistemic modality has been studied from many perspectives within linguistics and philosophy. It is one of the most studied phenomena in formal semantics. (a) grammatically: through modal verbs (e.g.
English clause syntax
This article describes the syntax of clauses in the English language, chiefly in Modern English. A clause is often said to be the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition. But this semantic idea of a clause leaves out much of English clause syntax. For example, clauses can be questions, but questions are not propositions. A syntactic description of an English clause is that it is a subject and a verb. But this too fails, as a clause need not have a subject, as with the imperative, and, in many theories, an English clause may be verbless.
Compound verb
In linguistics, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi-word compound that functions as a single verb. One component of the compound is a light verb or vector, which carries any inflections, indicating tense, mood, or aspect, but provides only fine shades of meaning. The other, "primary", component is a verb or noun which carries most of the semantics of the compound, and determines its arguments. It is usually in either base or [in Verb + Verb compounds] conjunctive participial form.
Uses of English verb forms
This article describes the uses of various verb forms in modern standard English language. This includes: Finite verb forms such as go, goes and went Nonfinite forms such as (to) go, going and gone Combinations of such forms with auxiliary verbs, such as was going and would have gone The uses considered include expression of tense (time reference), aspect, mood, modality and voice, in various configurations. For details of how inflected forms of verbs are produced in English, see English verbs.
English modal verbs
The English modal verbs are a subset of the English auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality (properties such as possibility, obligation, etc.). They can be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participle or infinitive forms) and by their neutralization (that they do not take the ending -(e)s in the third-person singular). The principal English modal verbs are can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would, and must.
Traditional grammar
Traditional grammar (also known as classical grammar) is a framework for the description of the structure of a language. The roots of traditional grammar are in the work of classical Greek and Latin philologists. The formal study of grammar based on these models became popular during the Renaissance. Traditional grammars may be contrasted with more modern theories of grammar in theoretical linguistics, which grew out of traditional descriptions.