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Negative sentence
UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
NEGATIVE SENTENCE IN VIETNAMESE
AND ENGLISH
Student’s name: Nguyen Thi Nguyet Nga
Class: 5CQBT05
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Negative sentence
Introduction
In daily conversation, we often use negative sentences, “Nobody knows about him” for
example. As we can see there are some special issues that you must understand in order
to make a negative sentence. Forming negative sentences may seem complicated at first.
You cannot simply translate the words of a negative Vietnamese sentence into English
words and create an idiomatically correct and understandable negative sentence in
English also Vietnamese. Negative sentences are one of the most difficult things for
Vietnamese students to deal with. Hence, in my research I would like to compare the
negative sentence in Vietnamese and English to see the similarities and differences
between the negative sentence in Vietnamese and English.
Definition
A negative sentence states that something is not true or incorrect (“Negative Sentences,”
n.d.). A negative adverb has to be added in order to negate or “cancel” the validity of the
sentence. In communication, a negative sentence is the sentence that confirms the
absence of thing, situation or event.
Negative sentence in Vietnamese
In Vietnamese language, generally negative sentences contain the word that conveys
negative meaning. Some negative words are very various. The most common marker of
lexical or sentential negation in Vietnamese is “không” (except when it appears in final
position, where it indicates a question); other negative elements with near-parallel
distribution and function include: “chẳng”, found in more literary contexts; “chả” (no,
not); and “chưa” (not yet). For example:
(1) a. Món ăn này không ngon.
That dish is not tasty.
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Negative sentence
b. Cô ấy hoàn toàn không tán thành.
She totally disapproved.
c. Cô ấy không hoàn toàn tán thành.
She didn’t totally approve.
As the examples in (1) illustrate, in contexts of constituent negation “không” must
immediately precede whatever constituent it modifies in order to be interpreted as a
negator of that constituent. Compare especially (1b) and (1c), where the reversed scope
of “không” with respect to the adverbial “hoàn toàn” (completely) radically alters the
interpretation of the sentence.
The close relationship between the syntactic position of “không” and its scopal
interpretation is brought out clearly by the interpretation of indefinite subjects in (2):
where immediately preceded by “không”, the subject argument “ai” is necessarily
interpreted as a polarity item (2a), otherwise it is treated as a wh-element (2b):
(2) a. Không ai thấy anh.
No-one saw you.
b. Ai không thấy anh?
Who didn’t see you?
Classification of negative sentences in Vietnamese language:
Up to now, there are two ways to classify the negative sentences in Vietnamese:
- Total negation versus component negation
- General negation versus particular negation (Diep 254)
According to Le Quang Thiem, there are two types of negative sentences: the descriptive
negative sentence and the disagreeable negative sentence (240).
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Negative sentence
The total negation is the sentence that contains negative word which is put before the
verb or the form S-V of the sentence. Whereas the component negation doesn’t have the
negative word in the verb phrase, other part of the sentence contains the negative word.
The general negation is the sentence that describes all of elements of a set while the
particular negation describes one or some elements of a set. From that we have a
following table:
General negation
Total negation
Component negation
Particular negation
Mọi người (/ai cũng) không
Một số (/có) người) không
biết việc đó.
biết việc đó.
Mọi người (/ai cũng) nói
Một số người nói không rõ.
không rõ.
Some forms of negative sentence in Vietnamese:
- To demonstrate the negative meaning, we use “không”
Cô ấy không đẹp.
Anh ấy không đi.
- To demonstrate the meaning “I don’t want, cannot” we use “chẳng or chả”
Nó chả hát.
Các anh chẳng làm được việc gì.
- To express the meaning of advising against doing something, we use “đừng, chớ”.
Các em đừng tắm ở chỗ nước sâu.
Anh chớ đi qua lối đó.
- To express the meaning of “not yet”, we use “chưa”.
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Negative sentence
Nó chưa học đến trình độ ấy.
Tôi chưa hoàn thành xong bài tập này.
When the negative sentences have some words like “ai, người nào, cái gì” as a subject ,
we will use the negative words as following sentences:
- It is at the beginning of the sentence.
Chẳng ai hỏi đến nó.
Không người nào đến đây.
Chưa cái gì xong.
- It is preceded by subject and accompanies with “cũng”.
Ai cũng chẳng hỏi đến nó.
Người nào cũng không đến đây.
Cái gì cũng chưa xong.
Sometimes we use interrogative word like “nào or đâu” to express strongly the negative
meaning. The word “nào” is at the beginning of the sentence and before the pronoun and
often accompanies with “có or lại”.
Nào tôi có nói thế bao giờ.
Nào ai lại xui nó làm thế.
The word “đâu” follows the verb.
Có đâu thế.
Negative sentence and negation of action:
Negative sentence is a means to carry out negation of action. Depending on the theory of
spoken action, negation is distinguished into two cases: the descriptive negation and
disagreeable negation.
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Negative sentence
The descriptive negation is carried out in the process of the description, the absence of
thing, event or situation. For example when seeing a cat without tail, we say: “Con mèo
này không có đuôi.” Another examples:
Mấy hôm nay trời không mưa mà cũng không gió.
Mình không có quyển sách này.
Rejection is carried out after the assertion by words or gestures in order to deny or
rectify this affirmation. There are some negative words to reject something:
Some negative words is added the word “phải” such as không phải, chẳng phải, chả phải,
có phải đâu, có phải….đâu, đâu phải, nào đâu phải.
Some negative word phrases such as (không) có đâu, (không) có…đâu, đâu có, làm thế
nào được.
For instance, to reject the idea “Anh Ba cao”, there are some following ways:
Anh Ba không cao.
Anh Ba đâu có cao.
Anh Ba mà cao.
Bảo anh Ba cao sao được.
In general, Vietnamese language has no tense, the negative sentences in Vietnamese are
carried out depending on the position of the words or phrases which convey the negative
meaning.
Negative sentence in English
Based on manner and means of formation of negative sentences, there are four types of
negative sentences in English:
1. Auxiliary negation
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Negative sentence
2. Noun phrase negation
3. Adverb negation
4. Morphological negation
We have the negation rule: in English, in order to claim that something is not true, you
form a negative sentence by adding the word “not” after the first auxiliary verb in the
positive sentence. If there is no auxiliary verb in the positive sentence, as in the Present
simple and Past simple tenses, then you add one (in both these cases, the auxiliary verb
do).
The following table for examples of negation in English. Some examples use the
contracted forms more used in informal writing and speech, and some others use the full
forms.
Negative element + contracted
Tense
Examples
forms
Do+not = don’t
I do not play.
Does+not = doesn’t
She doesn’t play.
Did+not= didn’t
I didn’t play.
Am+not (no amn’t)
I am not playing.
Is+not = isn’t
He is not playing.
Are+not = aren’t
We aren’t playing.
Was+not = wasn’t
I wasn’t playing.
Were+not = weren’t
They were not playing.
Have+not = haven’t
You haven’t played.
Has+not = hasn’t
She has not played.
Present simple
Past simple
Present progressive
Past progressive
Present perfect
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Negative sentence
Present perfect
Have+not+been = haven’t been
I have not been playing.
progressive
Has+not+been = hasn’t been
She hasn’t been playing.
Past perfect
Had+not = hadn’t
You hadn’t played
Had+not+been = hadn’t been
She hadn’t been playing.
Future simple
Will+not =won’t
I won’t play.
Future perfect
Will+not+have = won’t have
He will not have played.
Conditional
Would+not =wouldn’t
She wouldn’t play.
Past perfect
progressive
She wouldn’t have
Conditional perfect
Would+not+have =wouldn’t have
played.
Modals: can+not = can’t or cannot (formal). Example: I can’t play or I cannot play.
Should+not = shouldn’t. Example: We shouldn’t play.
In informal writing settings, you can contract the auxiliary verb with either the sentence
subject or the word “not”. In formal writing settings, refrain from contracting any words.
She is not playing. (formal)
She isn’t playing. = she’s not playing. (informal)
Like in Vietnamese, in English there is also the negative form in subject.
No rain fell that season.
No shops will be left open.
In English, the negative form in subject is the indifferent pronouns. This is the negative
word “no” that combines with indifferent pronoun becoming astatic words or phrases as
being a subject. For instance:
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Negative sentence
Nobody knew us there.
Nothing seems so important.
None of the rabbits survived.
Synthetizing some forms of negative sentences above in two languages, we have:
Languages
Negative words
S
Added words
Predicative
S
Nào
V+
Không/chẳng
Không có
Không/chẳng
Ai/ cái gì
Không phải
Mọi người/ thứ
V
Chẳng phải
Vietnamese
Bất cứ ai/ người nào
Nào ai/ có ai
Đâu
Có người nào
Đâu phải mọi người
V
đâu
Đâu phải ai
Negative words
S
V ….
aux
Nobody
English
Nothing
V
None
Double negative
A double negative occurs when two forms of negation are used in the same clause
(“Double negative,” n.d.) . In some languages (or varieties of a language) negative forms
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Negative sentence
are consistently used throughout the sentence to express a single negation. In other
languages, a double negative is used to negate a negation, and therefore, it resolves to a
positive. In the former case, triple and quadruple negation can also be seen, which leads
to the terms multiple negation or negative concord. For example:
We don’t need no education.
We don’t need no thought control.
Double negatives are generally not used in written varieties of Standard English.
Consider the phrase “I do not want nothing.” The intended meaning would be expressed
as “I do not want anything” in Standard English, according to prescriptive rules.
However, if there is very heavy stress on “do not” or a specific plaintive stress on
“nothing,” Standard English can use the form “I do not want nothing” as a way of
emphasizing that the speaker would rather have “something” than “nothing” at all.
Although they are not used in Standard English, double negatives are used in various
dialects of English, including Southern American English, African American Vernacular
English, and most British regional dialects, most notably the East London and East
Anglian dialects. This is similar to negative concord found in other languages. Often
double negatives are considered incorrect grammatical usages; however, dialects which
use double negatives do so consistently and follow a different set of descriptive linguistic
rules.
As I have just analysed above, Vietnamese and English language are used some means of
negation to make a lot of various negative forms:
Some means of negation in Vietnamese:

Words: không, chẳng (chả), chưa (chửa).
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Negative sentence

Negative word of nuance: đếch, khỏi, ứ.

Some combination of negative words: không-chẳng-chưa (phải), (là); khôngchẳng-chưa (bao giờ), (hề).

Some combination of negative words with astatic words: không-chẳng (ai), (gì),
(đâu).

Some disagreeable negation with astatic words: (không) có…đâu, nào có…đâu,
đâu có..., làm gì có…, có phải đâu…., đâu (có) phải…

Some words: ít khi, hiếm khi, mấy khi, trừ phi, ngoại trừ, nhưng (không phải là),
chứ (không phải là).
Some means of negation in English:

Negative words: not, no, never.

Some words created with “no”: nobody, nothing, no one, none, nowhere, neither.

Some adverbs having negative meaning: hardly, seldom, rarely, scarcely, barely.

Some astatic verbs having negative meaning: few, little.

Some prepositions having negative meaning: without, against, but, except for.
The result of contrastive analysis about the negative sentences, I find that there are some
similarities and differences between the negative sentences in Vietnamese and English.
Similarity:
Both of them have the means of negation that are negative words and phrases conveying
negative meaning.
Differences:
In general, there is the means of negation “không or chẳng” in Vietnamese, so it has to
combine with other astatic words or combine to create the phrase. Hence, the use of “not,
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Negative sentence
no” in English is not correlative the use of “không, chẳng”in Vietnamese. Especially, in
Vietnamese language there is no a pair of correlative negation with “no, not”, for
example:
We didn’t see anybody…  We saw nobody.
An honest man would not lie….
 No honest man would lie.
There are the negative forms of object in English but not in Vietnamese. Vietnamese
language has the negative forms of predicative so it will replace the negative forms of
object in English, for instance:
I saw no birds. ( in English)
 Vietnamese: Tôi không nhìn thấy con chim nào cả.
Through the analysis above, we can realize that the negative sentences in English and
Vietnamese both have some correlative forms also some differences. These can be
applied in the teaching of writing and translation from Vietnamese into English and
English into Vietnamese. It means that includes the application in the teaching of
grammar. I think that it is of great importance for teachers to apply in the teaching of
translation, we cannot translate words by words because some forms are not correlative
between Vietnamese and English. Hence, when students understand about the correlative
forms and the differences in the forms they will translate more exactly. One kind of
comparison which may cause difficulty to Vietnamese students of English and where
they are prone to commit errors is the following construction and its variant:
Eg: we cannot….any more than we can….
Chúng ta không thể…..cũng như chúng ta không thể……
It is not possible…..any more than it is possible…..
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Negative sentence
Người ta không thể ……cũng như người ta không thể……….
It is therefore quite obvious that with regard to this sort errors students are required to be
aware of the difference between two parallel English and Vietnamese constructions and
put to some drilling, whether oral or written, before they can produce correct sentences.
Conclusion
Negative sentences are one of the most difficult things for Vietnamese students to deal
with, especially to translation which Vietnamese students always have difficulties. Via
this essay I hope that Vietnamese students who study English can know more about the
similarities also the differences between the negative sentences in Vietnamese and
English so that they can translate also study English better.
References
Le, Quang Thiem. Nghiên Cứu Đối Chiếu Các Ngôn Ngữ. Hanoi: Hanoi National
University Publisher, 2004.
Diep, Quang Ban. Ngữ pháp Việt Nam – Phần câu. University of Education
Publisher,2004.
“Negative sentences.” WhiteSmoke. 28 Dec. 2009
<http://www.whitesmoke.com/negative-sentences>
“Double negative.” Double negative – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2009. 28 Dec.
2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_negative>.
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Negative sentence
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