Grammatical polarity is the distinction of affirmative and negative. In English, grammatical polarity is generally indicated by the presence or absence of the modifier not, which negates the statement. Many other languages contain similar modifiers: Italian and Interlingua have non, Spanish has no, French has ne ... pas, Esperanto has ne, German has nicht, and Swedish has inte. Special negative and affirmative items are often found in answers to questions. In English, these are no and yes respectively, in French non and oui, and Swedish nej and ja. In addition to this, some languages have a distinct form for a positive answer to a negative question, such as French si and Swedish jo.
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Famous quotes containing the words grammatical and/or polarity:
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