Problems with the word "not" and "cannot"

Question

It all started when I was watching a movie and within the movie, one of the actors starting saying a compound sentences with negatives and double negatives in them. I was wondering how I couldn't figure the sentences out but my friends could, so I started to feel that maybe something is wrong with me. After that movie, I started analyzing every negative sentence thrown at me and would have trouble understanding it most of the time. The funny thing is that up till now, I have been understanding and using negative sentences just by letting it slide past me and not analyzing it. But when I stopped to analyze to see if I really understood why the sentence meant what it meant, the " not " started to bother me.

So I tried getting some help at school by asking someone at the tutoring center. The person I asked started off with an easy sentence: "I am not a student." He kept saying, " You are just not a student. Not a student." Which didn't help much. Then I asked, " But you could also be a fireman, a police officer, a teacher, right?" and he said, " Yes, but in this sentence it just means you are not a student." He did not help me much because he kept using the problem I had in his answer, but at least it cleared up some confusion.

For a year now, I have been trying to find new ways to understand negative sentences. Here are things I tried doing, but only helped sometimes.

Read the sentence with the "not", then take it out and read the sentence without the "not."

Consider "not" as "NO" because that is the definition of "not" in some old dictionaries. Sometimes it works, but it's confusing for my mind to say, " He does no want to go" instead of "He doesn't want to go."

Mentally make a NO sign equivalent to the NO SMOKING sign, and put that sign over the words coming after the word "not".

Finally, thinking of "not" as a percentage... e.g. " It is not hot" = " It is 0 percent hot"

I don't know if there are anyone with the same problem, but everyone I asked always tell me this is easy to understand and it makes me feel like something is wrong with me. But since this is an english forum, I might as well ask before It drives me crazy.

The other thing giving me problems is the word " cannot." If someone said " I cannot go to school" by hearing it so much, I would understand, but when I break it down, it doesn't make sense. So I take out the not, " I can go to school" = " I am able to go to school" Then I just ignore the "I" now and just say "able to go to school" and " not able to go to school" until I understand it. So everytime I hear "cannot", I have to changed it into "able" and put the "not" in front of "able" to understand it.

I could go on and on about the people I met and asked, but I'll just get straight to the question. Does anyone know a trick or an easy way of understanding a sentence with " not " or " cannot ". I'll be truly grateful for any advice. Thanks.

Khoff · Accepted Answer

Hoa - I admit I'm really puzzled by your difficulty -- your post shows that your English is excellent, including some negative sentences which you use correctly ("I couldn't figure the sentences out but my friends could," "He did not help me much").  It seems that the analyses you have been using are fine (except for #2, with "no" - maybe the way to think of this is to turn the sentence containing "not" into a question, and answer it with "no", like this : "He does not want to go." = Does he want to go?  NO.).  I'm wondering how your native language deals with negation,  and if it gives you trouble in your native language as well if you think about it too much.

Hoa · Answer

I was born here in the United States and it bothers me how I someone can give me a very long sentence and I will be able to understand it, but if that person puts 1 "not" somewhere, it would throw me off. My secondary language is Vietnamese and like most languages the Vietnamese language uses the word "Khong", which is equivalent to "No" and "Not", to negate sentences. To answer your question, yea it does bother me when I think about it too much like how I think of this " not " problem so much. If I just let it run through my mind once without thinking so much, then I would figure out what the person was trying to say.

Mister Micawber · Answer

Native speakers don't think about the grammar of what they are saying and hearing, Hoa-- and many of them think that grammar is their mother's mother-- so stop thinking about it, and it will work fine. Either that, or pursue a graduate degree in Linguistics, and you can study stuff like [url="http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:-v3-105kOw4J:www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/PUB/WPL/98papers/cormack.pdf++%22Negation+in+English%22&hl=en&lr=lang_en"]THIS[/url].

Paco2004 · Answer

Hello Hoa

The question you have is interesting, but as Mr M suggested, we had better not think too much about English 'not'. Otherwise we would be crazy.

Logically "not" is thought as a word to negate the trueness of a statement. For example, suppose "I am Japanese" is true. Then "I am not Japanese" is untrue. But in actual English collocations, this relation does not always hold. For example, "You mustn't study English" is more than a simple negation of the trueness of "You must study English". Also "Many of people wanted the war" and "Many of people didn't want the war" can be both true or both untrue concurrently. Like this way linguistic negation is someway different from logical negation.

Another problem of 'not' negation is that we sometimes get puzzled at what word 'not' is negating. Take a sentence like "Paco is not a wise person", for example. This can be interpreted as "Paco is an unwise person" as well as "Paco is a wise dog"
paco

Khoff · Answer

Your photo would certainly seem to support the latter theory, Paco!

Problems with the word "not" and "cannot"

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