Types of Negation and its interaction with Scope

Negation as a Logical Operator: In English negation has its impact on the structure and the complete meaning of the sentence simultaneously.

Words used as negation are: no, not and n’t: indefinite pronouns like nothing and nobody; adverbs like nowhere and never; adjective no as in ‘no one’, ‘no money’, etc.; conjunction like neither and nor.

Negation has its effect, usually, on the truth and falsity of a sentence. When a true sentence is negated it becomes false sentence and when a false sentence is negated it become true sentence. 

Therefore a negation works a logical operator at the level of meaning. For example:

(a) Sun rises everyday. We accept this as a true sentence.

(b) Sun does not rise everyday. We accept this sentence as a false sentence.

There are times when negation can be a cause of paradox. In sentence, “This sentence is not true”.

If we consider it to be the true than we have to accept that it is not true. And if considered it to be false then we have to accept that the sentence is true. This is called Russell’s paradox.

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