The following are all positive sentences:
1. I will think about it.
2. Timothy has called her.
3. The teacher was listening.
Can you turn them into negative sentences, using the word not? The related negative sentences are:
4. I will not think about it.
5. Timothy has not called her.
6. The teacher was not listening.
(Of course, native speakers often put not in contractions, saying, for example, I won't think about it instead of I will not think about it; we will not be focusing on the contractions in our discussion here.)
No native speaker of English would make the negative sentence something like, *I will think about not it. That's because there's a systematic relationship between positive and negative sentences, even though they don't have the same meaning. We're not usually consciously thinking about how to make a sentence negative, but we know how to do it, and we do it in a consistent way.
Can you figure out exactly where you put not in a sentence when you make it negative?
Here are some negative sentences, with not underlined and the helping verb in bold. (See Lesson 31 for a reminder about helping verbs.)
Review the options below to login to check your access.
Log in with your Cambridge Higher Education account to check access.
If you believe you should have access to this content, please contact your institutional librarian or consult our FAQ page for further information about accessing our content.