Hello everyone,
it’s been a while since we’ve had a real grammar episode but the wait is over. Welcome to a new episode of the German is Easy – Learn German Online Course. And this time we’ll have a look at the perfect topic for a hot summer day:
the position of “nicht”
The question where to put nicht in a sentence is one that confuses many learners. And it is one that textbooks have the perfect, spot-on answer to…
nooooot! Stupid textbooks.
Okay, to be fair… the stuff about sentence negation vs element negation, is not all wrong, but it gets really confusing once you look closer. Because just like with sentence structure, the standard material kind of fails to look under the hood. It explains symptoms, not the cause.
So we’ll try a slightly different approach, one that captures the underlying mechanics just as well as this picture does.
Haha. Get it? Underlying mechanics?
Seriously though, our approach is gonna be AWESOME because all we need is one rule and get this – the rule has no exceptions. WOW!!
Oh, beside that rule we also need very open mind. And a coffee because it’ll be intense.
In part one we’ll get to know the basic rule and we’ll lay a fair bit of groundwork. And before you go like “Dude, I’m a working man, mother of 4 and full time student… I ain’t got time for groundwork.” let me tell you… you will want to read this. You need this groundwork like Burger King needs ground beef.
So, are you ready to dive in? Perfect!
Many of you probably know or have at least heard that German has two kinds of sentence structures. The main sentence structure, with the verb in the second position and then the side sentence structure. That’s the one you all hate. You know, the one you see after words like dass and weil, the one with a all the verbs at the end.
- Ich trinke heute ein leckeres Bier. (main sentence)
- … , dass ich heute ein leckeres Bier trinke. (side sentence)
For the average learner, the main sentence structure is the normal structure and the side sentences are just a (per)version of it.
Well, get ready for an idea that is crazy but also great.
A really greazy idea
What if I told you that the side sentence structure is actually the true structure of a German sentence. You’re probably like “Please god, noooo!!” And I know that sounds grisly but bear with me please.
If you really want to get a handle on word order, you have to look at side sentences. Word order is much stricter in side sentence and it is there that the underlying structure of German really shows.
Instead of thinking of the main sentence as the normal one, we should think of it as a side sentence with two extra slots in the beginning and these slots get filled with stuff you take out of its normal position.
One of the slots, the second one, gets filled with part of the verb, the other is kind of a wild card slot and can take pretty much any one element. Let’s do an example.
- …, dass ich heute in die Bar gegangen bin.
I don’t want to dive into word order too much so just take my word for it… this is the normal order of these elements and you cannot switch for example heute and ich without creating so much tension that the result sounds almost wrong.
Now lets make that into a main sentence. We’ll remove the dass because it’s just a connector and add the two extra slots
- [Extra 1] [Extra 2 ] ich heute in die Bar gegangen bin.
And now lets fill the extra slots. Extra 2 gets the verb from the end, extra 1 can take any one thing pretty much.
- [Extra slot 1] [extra slot 2] [natural order of elements]
- [Ich] [bin]
ichheute in die Bar gegangenbin. - [Heute] [bin] ich
heutein die Bar gegangenbin. - [In die Bar] [bin] ich heute
in die Bargegangenbin.
In a way, all the different main sentence version are just a result of us taking out different elements out of their “natural” position and putting them in the first slot and it’s much easier to analyze the side sentence because there are no “out of line” slots.
Cool.
Now, when it comes to the position of nicht, there’s one slot in particular that matters… the verb slot.
Most people think, that the standard position for the verb is the second one. With our way of looking at it here, the verb slot is actually at the very end and in main sentences we’re taking out something from that slot and put it into position 2.
And this way of looking at things is the key to the fundamental rule nicht.
The one basic rule
In standard lore, they make a distinction between two kinds of nicht-negations. One is called element negation and it’s done by putting nicht in front of the element you want to negate, the other one is called sentence negation, where the sentence as a whole gets negated. And for sentence negation, nicht comes at the end… or at least as late as possible.
- Ich werde nicht morgen nach Berlin fahren. (“element negation”)
- Tomorrow is not the day I will go Berlin.
- Ich arbeite heute nicht. (“sentence negation”)
- I’m not working today.
But making this distinction between two kinds of nicht-negations with two sets of rules for the position sucks. It makes things more complicated than they are and does NOT reflect the inner workings of the language.
The only, an absolute rule for the position of nicht is this:
“Nicht” precedes what it negates.
And that’s it.
But what about the sentences with the nicht at the end?
- Ich arbeite heute nicht.
Isn’t this an exception?? Like… nicht doesn’t precede anything here, right? But this is where our groundwork comes into play. Because nicht actually ISN’T at the end. It is in front of the verb slot. Only that the verb slot is empty because we took out the content and moved it into the extra slot.
- Ich arbeite heute nachmittag nicht [ verb slot – empty]
Once we put the sentence into side sentence mode we can see it.
- …, dass ich heute nachmittag nicht [arbeite.]
Booom, nicht is NOT at the end anymore because under the hood it never was. It just happened to be the last word.
- …, dass ich heute nachmittag [arbeite] nicht…. WRONG!!
This is super wrong. Nicht ALWAYS precedes what it negate so it can NEVER come at the end of a side sentence.
And that’s not all. We now also have a perfectly logical reason why nicht doesn’t come after prefixes or ge-forms or other verbs. Because those sit in the final verb slot.
- Ich schlafe heute [aus] nicht… WRONG!
- Ich schlafe heute nicht [aus]… correct
- Ich habe heute [geschlafen] nicht… WRONG!
- Ich habe heute nicht [geschlafen].
- Ich kann heute [schlafen] nicht… WRONG!
- Ich kann heute nicht [schlafen].
And it’s not only helpful with that. You see, if nicht precedes what it negates that also implies that anything coming before nicht is NOT negated. And that can help for instance understand the difference between the following two
- Ich schwimme nicht gern.
- Ich schwimme gerne nicht.
Both are correct but only one is the proper translation for “I don’t like swimming”. Any idea which one? It’s the first one. And when we put them in side sentence mode, it becomes obvious.
- …, dass ich nicht gern schwimme.
- …, dass ich gern nicht schwimme.
The word that expresses the liking is gern, and in the second version gern comes before nicht so it is NOT negated. The second sentence actually means
- I do like not swimming.
So our one basic rule can already clear up quite a bit. And by the way.. it totally holds for the kein-negations, too. Because kein is nothing other than a contraction of a negation particle and ein.
- nicht ein Bier
- nichein Bier
- nickein Bier
- n’kein Bier
- Hodor…. wait, who said that
Cool.
So this our basic rule. But as awesome as it is, it’s not enough to help with the whole scope of the position of nicht and all the various “What the hell” moments there are. Just to give you two examples…
- Ich rede mit Maria im Zoo nicht…. super correct :)
- Ich bin mit Maria im Zoo nicht…. SUPER WRONG :[
- Ich habe immer noch nicht den neuen Song von Rhianna gehört…. super correct :)
- Ich habe immer noch nicht ihn gehört…. SUPER WRONG :[
Tricky stuff right? I mean… whyyyyyy. For these things we need to use our brains.
To really understand the positioning of nicht and when to put it where, we now need to work with that rule using an open mind and common sense. Yeah, I know… some sort of “If-A-put-nicht-here,-if-B-put-it-there” -thing would be easier but it would also be kinda boring. Just like this famous chocolate.
What? Yes , I did spend some time on Photoshop just for this dumb joke. Oh well, the things I do for laugh.
So, to properly place nicht, we need to get an understanding of what I call a default negation.
The neutral negation
In German but also in other languages there are more than one way to add a negative to a sentence. What I call neutral negation is the version that does not have a special focus. I guess you could call it “sentence negation” but I’d rather not… I find the term really confusing.
Anyway, here’s an example
- Thomas didn’t check his mails today.
- Thomas didn’t check HIIIIS mails today.
The first one is a neutral negation. There’s no special focus on anything. In the second one on the other hand, the negation specifically targets “his”. That’s what’s being negated, implying that Thomas might have read someone else’s. Probably Maria’s. I mean… it’s her own fault. She could just change her passw… but I digress.
So to really master negation in a language you need to get a feel for what the neutral negation is and how to create special focus.
English, at least in spoken, keeps one structure and relies on aural emphasis for the focusing.
In German it’s a little more complex.
German, too, uses aural emphasis, but also the position of nicht, can create special focus. Can, not must.
In longer sentences, several positions can sound neutral depending how you say it. And which positions are how neutral doesn’t only depend on the sentence… it actually friggin’ depends on the context in which the sentence is said, on the intention of the speaker
- …, dass nicht Thomas gestern mit Maria im Zoo war.
- …, dass Thomas nicht gestern mit Maria im Zoo war.
- … , dass Thomas gestern nicht mit Maria im Zoo war.
- …, dass Thomas gestern mit Maria nicht im Zoo war.
- …, dass Thomas gestern mit Maria im Zoo nicht war.
Number 1 is not neutral at all and has a clear focus on Thomas, for 2 and 3 it depends on how it’s said and the context of conversation whether it’s a focused negation or not, number 4 is pretty neutral but it implies that Thomas did something with Maria and number 5 is … pretty much wrong.
- …, that it wasn’t Thomas who was at the zoo with Maria yesterday.
- … that it wasn’t yesterday that Thomas was at the zoo with Maria.
… that Thomas WASN’T at the zoo with Maria yesterday. - … that it wasn’t Maria with whom Thomas was at the zoo yesterday.
… that Thomas wasn’t at the zoo with Maria yesterday. - … that Thomas wasn’t at the ZOO with Maria yesterday.
... that Thomas wasn’t at the zoo with Maria yesterday. (most neutral) - … (not translatable)
God daaaaamn…. now you’re probably like “How am I supposed to learn that.” But it’s not as bad as it seems. All we need is common sense, and the idea of scenery.
By scenery I basically mean the setting, the “world” about which we learn something in the sentence that has the negation. And because that’s super abstract, let’s do an example.
- I don’t STUDY at the library.
Using aural emphasis… well… bold font… we’ve focused the negation specifically on the verb to study here. The other elements (“I”, “at the library”) are NOT touched by the negation. And those elements are the “scenery“. Me at the library, that’s the scenery we learn something about and what we learn is that studying is NOT what I do there.
So, anything that is not touched by the negation is the scenery. And in part two we’ll see the power of this scenery stuff because it’ll help us clear up everything.
Now you’re like “Wait… in part 2? So we have to wait a week?”
Well, actually no… you’ll have to wait more than a week :).
Yeah… I know you hate me right now. But seriously, I want part 2 to be good and make sense so I’m not gonna rush it. And I think we’ve a lot to digest already.
Let me know in the comments if the stuff made sense so far or if you have any questions. Do you think it’s any good? Also, what are your experiences with the “standard” book explanation. Does that work for you? And let me know if there are any things in particular that you don’t understand about the position of nicht so we can talk about it in part 2.
I’m out for now… I wish you a wonderful week, I hope you enjoyed it and see you next time.
Further reading:
If you liked the stuff about side sentence and you want to find out WHY that kind of is the natural structure, then check out part one of my post on word order:
This explanation was really amazing and make perfect sense, Emanuel. Vielen Dank!
I’m just not completely sure why the SUPER WRONG and n.5 sentences are wrong.
But anyway, I’ll keep looking at the sentences using an open mind and common sense, as you said.
Looking forward to reading part 2.
Yeah, we’ll explain those super wrongs in part 2. It’s pretty simple actually once you use scenery powers ;)
It helps a lot and has sorted some stuff out for me. I need to read it a few times more. Thanks.
That’s good actually because right after posting I felt the urge to do some tweaking here and there. No big stuff, just little bits :)
Intense. Will need two weeks to get ready for part 2. Now to go and vote. Tschüss!
Wait, what should I vote for? Do you mean the Brexit?
Not you Emanuel! I had to go and vote. Didn’t do any good though. The lunatics are running the asylum now. Would the idiotic idiots really have voted to leave the EU if they’d known we’d have Boris Bloody Johnson as PM by October? I will have to step up the German study so I can get a job there while I’m still allowed.
I’m not an expert of politics but Boris Johnson does look like Trump a bit. Time for new conspiracy theories.
Your Trumpesque explanation of Untergehen was pant-wettingly funny! “German verbs. They’re noun havers” always makes me chuckle when I think of it. You truly nailed that SOB. Boris won’t offer quite so much in the way of comedy material sadly, being all about little more than his posho voice and classical references. Dull dull dull. Telling a taxi driver to “Fuck off and die, and not necessarily in that order” was pretty good though…
This was very helpful, especially when talking about the emphasis of certain word order. One thing that I still don’t understand, partially because of how the books teach it, is when to use kein instead of nicht.
We’ll touch on that in part two. “kein” is a neutral “nicht ein”. As soon as you focus in the number, it becomes “nicht ein” again.
I’m kind of a beginner. I took German in fifth and sixth grade and now at the age of 41, I am trying to relearn the language. I have an insatiable desire to know it fluently. Not sure why as nobody in Texas even speaks German. Anyway, yesterday, I was learning about sentence structure and was completely confused regarding the side sentence structure. With the explanation above, the light bulb in my brain came on, and I actually understand. I enjoy your explanation and the side sentence structure makes a lot more sense now; thank you.
Wow that’s cool that it makes sense for a beginner too. I was worried that it would be too confusing. I think you should also check out my series on word order:
https://yourdailygerman.com/2015/01/07/german-word-order/
Thsi is part 1 and you can get some insight as to why the side sentence structure is the more “natural” one there. Part 2 is also interesting, part 3 might be a bit heavy for a beginner but then again, warum nicht.
I am a beginner per se, but I do have a degree in English, I speak fairly descent Spanish, and I have studied Hebrew and Urdu, So generally I pick up languages quickly. It all comes down to figuring out the grammar for me, and the side sentence has/had been a challenge to figure out. I haven’t read the article above but plan to when I get a chance.
Maybe get yourself down to Fredericksberg (or any one the few remaining Texas German-speaking communities) before the language dies out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_German
Hey Jennifer – I saw your comment about Texas and thought of this article. Might be time for a road trip!
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22490560
Very interesting!!! Thank you!
Toll!
Ich mag diesen artikel.
Du musst ein neues Buch von Grammatik schreiben:)
I think I am learning as much about English grammar as German!
Personally, at this point I find it easier to just think in terms of element and sentence negation.
That’s completely fine. I just wanted to have something more comprehensive that doesn’t need a thousand exceptions. I have to see how I can turn that into actual practical tips that can help the student with actually saying something :)
Position of ‘nicht’: very clear and very useful – many thanks. Quite logical really, but, in my experience with German grammars, it’s one of the thorny problems that is often glossed over for fear of confusing the beginner; despite the fact that we use this form of positional nuance all the time in English – as you ably demonstrate in your translation of the examples you use.
I think the problems with textbooks and their explanations are that they just keep copying (and have been doing so for decades) the old explanations from the prior editions but they don’t ever look at linguistic research, nor do they dare to sit down and build it from scratch.
That would be too much work and too expensive, I guess.
There’s a book called die Duden Grammatik . It’s about 1500 pages and its a comprehensive description of the German language (including pronunciation and whatever). I once got that from the library and was really impressed by how open minded they were, acknowledging a lot. Especially the stuff regarding sentence structure was really well done.
Then, a couple months later, I wanted to check on something and I got an older edition. Wow, that was a completely different book… and it sucked! It was all prescriptive and rule focused, where the new version would speak of trends and dynamics.
They did a really thorough re-do and I think textbooks could use that too… instead of just changing a SMS message to a whatsapp message :)
I really like those explanations. It’s fantastic to learn that the primal order in german is the side one. Amazing.
Yeah, I found that in a linguistics book (I’m not a linguist but I browse their stuff every now and then and see what sticks). They analyse side sentences and that just made a lot of sense to me. For the German we all speak today, that’s really the order. Back in the day it used to be more flexible though so these things are somewhat subject to change (sloooow change). Have you read the series on word order by the way?
You are amazing.
To think about side sentence structure as being the actually “main” structure, and the main structure as being a variation of *that*, with extra slots 1 and 2, is really a remarkable way of looking at things. I’ve never thought about it that way, but it makes sense! It’s like the grand unified theory, but for German grammar. One unifying rule.
I found the explanation of side sentence vs main really interesting as well! I took 2 years of German in high school and 2 in college. I don’t recall anything about this from that time. I’ve been reviewing my German after many years. I love these detailed explanations for their insight and “scientific” accounting. There IS some logic to language if you look hard enough for it!
Oh, thank you! I always have problems concerning the position of “nicht” in the sentence. But this article helped me a lot, and I’m waiting for the next part. :)
Because the German embassy and German institutes are not available now in my country Syria, this makes the internet my only means to get educated. I have been following this blog for more than a year. But I was sad when I read that it is no longer available for free. So I send an email explaining my situation, and I was offered this free account for a year, which I’m using it right now.
So I would like to thank all the those who make this happen. This is much appreciated. They remind us that there are still good people out there. :)
Thank you so much. :)
Thanks for caring changing the colors. Helps a lot for visual memory! You are Great :)
For me, the “scenery” explanation was the clearest. I need to go back and re-read the side sentence part again. That concept is completely new to me, so it wasn´t absorbed quite so easily. And once again, I am delighted with the information that you present and how you present it. Perhaps some day you can take all of your posts and combine them into a book; making some REAL money for your efforts!
I also love the bolding/colors – it helps nuance an otherwise flat lesson. Although to nitpick, it sometimes drives me nuts when the italics, etc, either don´t include the entire word, or bleed over to an adjoining letter :) But that´s just the obsessive in me coming out. Pay me no heed!
Hahahaha… I feel your pain :D. It gets on my nerves, too, but sometimes the editor does what it wants (and sometimes my hand does)
Diese ist toll! Danke, noch mal. Ich bin noch ein Anfänger, aber diese hilft!!
Jennifer, wir sprechen Deutsch en Houston! :)
Cool, freut mich zu hören, dass es dir das hilft.
Kleine Korrektur:
“diese(s/n/m/…” benutzt man fast nie allein. Man sagt “diese(-) etwas” so wie “this something”. Für einfach nur “this” würde man “das” oder “das hier” sagen.
Hodor…rofl =D
Glad someone got that. Or should I say GoT that :D
http://starecat.com/hold-the-door-hodor-let-me-out-meout-meow-cat-game-of-thrones/
Mawsome!!
I have decoverd your site lately and i congratulate you for you huge effort.
i have question concerning the sentence
“Ich bin mit Maria im zoo nicht” which you considered as a super wrong sentence, don’t you think that this negates all your theory about side and main sentences, which you have used to justify the position of nicht at the end of sentence??
Very good question :). That’s what I’m going to talk about in part 2. The thing is that negating the verb alone doesn’t always make that much sense. If you negate JUST the verb, that means that all the rest is NOT negated. So in that case the things that are NOT negated are me, Maria and our location. And there’s a big conflict that makes the sentence sound super weird. I don’t want to spoil it but maybe you can piece it together yourself ;)
You are milking it too much. You just complicate things further.
Milking what? Complicating what? I’m all in for criticism but you have to be a bit more specific if you want me to change it or shorten it.
to be rigorous is sometimes painful. But that was some pretty damn good painful milking to me
i thought you said a week or two. The article has been posted since june and there is nothing here about part 2.
I know, I’m late. I always am with this stuff. The thing is… I need sort of an impulse to write something. I need to have this moment of “Yeah, this week is the week for that topic.”. And I haven’t had that for “nicht” yet. If I force it, it’ll be not so good.
Great post, I really like these kind of explanations. BTW, I really hope that part two includes something about negating “müssen” and “dürfen”, because it seems to me that they also contradict the rule presented in the post (“nicht” seems to negate everything).
Good hint, thanks. I’ll use those in examples, too. But the totally fit in with the explanation :). Stay tuned
Wait…the Position of Nicht is B-Level? Where’s part two?
Not out yet. I know, it’s been a while but for these things I have to wait until I “feel” the article, otherwise I can’t make it so it’s enjoyable. It’s coming though.
As for B-Level… I felt like it was a bit too theoretical for A-level (I don’t want A-level students to feel bad because they’re overwhelmed). Maybe I should just not tag it as a level and just leave it as grammar.
Dass Ich im Zoo mit Maria nicht bin. I’m a Doctor, Jim, not a ‘im Zoo mit Maria”.
I think I have it figured out. Ich bin mit Maria im Zoo nicht. As Bones might say, I’m a Doctor, Jim, not a “mit Maria im Zoo”.
Is that actually based on a quote from Trek?
I’m a little stuck (I think) on the Rhianna examples:
Ich habe immer noch nicht den neuen Song von Rhianna gehört….
Ich habe immer noch nicht ihn gehört….
Based on your discussion, the position of nicht implies that you heard a song, but what that song is, is what’s being negated.
The second instance would work with a “sondern”. I haven’t heard IT yet, but I did hear THAT.
The ‘neutral negation’ would work, however. Ich habe immer noch ihn nicht gehört. “I haven’t heard it yet.”
Am I close?
The neutral negation for the version with “ihn” would be
– Ich habe ihn noch nicht gehört.
If there’s a “noch” involved then you wouldn’t really separate that from “nicht”. They’re a cluster, pretty much.
You’re right that the ihn-version I gave would work with “sondern”. You did hear something (a song) but not THIS one.
I feel like, this only answers part of your question so let me know what you’re still unsure about :)
Hi Manuel, so… I was trying to look for the 2nd part of this article, but I couldn’t find it. Is it any? Or the next part is still in the misery? I mean, mystery?
Shame on me, still in the mystery. It’ll come, though. Eventually.
where can i find the part 2??
In my head :). I still have to write it … I know, shame on me!!
When you say a sentence is superwrong, why can’t you just say the correct form?
If I don’t do, then it’s because it doesn’t matter at that moment of the explanation. The only thing that does matter is to show what doesn’t work. I’m not saying that this is the right approach, it’s just what I felt like makes for a good progression. I sometimes like to take students by the hand and guide them and then it’s important that they follow me every step of the way and trust me.
But yeah, criticism accepted… which sentence do you want the correct version for?
At last, a simple (and clear) explanation. The explanation in “Hammer’s Modern Grammar and Usage” (4th edition), while correct, is excessively complicated.
Cool, glad to hear that! The second part will be a bit more complicated, but only in sense of “open mindedness”, not really exceptions and sub-rules.
“What if I told you that the side sentence structure actually the true structure or German.” — This sentence does not make any sense.
Ups, what a blunder.
“What if I told you that the side sentence structure is actually the true structure of a German sentence”
That’s what I meant.
Thanks for the heads-up and sorry for that mistake.
5. …, dass Thomas gestern mit Maria im Zoo nicht war.
Following previous comments, I guess it is:
Tomas yesterday wasn’t “mit Maria im Zoo”, but he was a “Batman”. ?
Interesting idea but what you’re negating is “mit Maria im Zoo” and you contrast it with “Batman”. However, “mit Maria im Zoo” is in front of “nicht” so it is NOT negated. Something happened with Maria at the zoo. The question is just what that is. And we’re negating “to be”. And that’s what makes this order super weird aka wrong. Whatever happens with Maria at the zoo… Thomas being there is part of it.
Does that make sense?
Very very useful article, thanks
but where is part 2 ?
Ugh… don’t ask :).
I actually made an attempt at writing it this January but I ran into a dead end half way through and realized I had to completely reorganize the stuff.
That was soooo frustrating that I stayed away from it ever since (and will do so for a while… it was like driving against a wall)
Hello, from this article I would assume that a compound verb in a side sentence is considered as as single entity for the purpose of nicht. For example
Ich habe ihm gesagt, dass ich micht nicht gelangweilt habe -> right
Ich habe ihm gesagt, dass ich micht gelangweilt nicht habe -> wrong
Corrent?
100 % :)
I am moved. Heavy thank you for this amazing lesson
Gerne :). Glad to hear you enjoyed it.
I think it would be better if you first gave us the answer and then launched into the water boarding.
Hmm… is it really so tough?
The thing is… what is the answer, really? And if I just give that first, will it still have the same effect as after the water boarding.
OMG guys where is part 2? My curiosity is killing meee. Please give me some updates =(((.
Shame on me, I know!!! I made an attempt at it in January but I got HORRIBLY stuck halfway and realized I had to rearrange everything. That was so demoralizing that I had to walk away from it for a while and let it ripen :/
How do I get to The Position of “nicht” – Part 2? Thanks!
By waiting :). Seriously, I haven’t finished it yet. Shame on me!!
Are we there yet?
Nope :/ (I really feel bad, but I can’t force it)
If you’re still mulling part 2 over – is there any chance a brief section comparing and contrasting the position “nicht” with the position of “auch”?
Uhm… I’d rather do the “nicht” article first :D. I have never thought for a second about whether or not there’s a parallel to the position of “auch”. Might very well be, but I’d have to start from zero :)
Wow missed two “of”s in that sentence. Gone oflexic.
And I missed that you missed them. Seriously, my brain just added them mentally when I read the comment.
In other words: “nicht war” is super wrong.
Trying to wrap my head around this… dass ich gestern zu Hause nicht war.. is wrong.
Lemme try to analyze:
“ich gestern zu Hause” is not negated, so I was home doing something. Saying “nicht war” makes no sense. Is that it?
However, this is okay “. dass ich gestern abend zu Hause nicht studiert habe (ich habe mir eigentlich ein DVD geschaut )”
Am I getting it?
P. S .where s part 2? I search the site but didn’t find it.
Part 2 is not finished yet :(. I had a go at it a few months ago and I got horribly stuck, and eventually realized that I have to start over. Now I have a bit of a trauma :). It’ll come, though!!
You’re on to something with your analysis. The not negated part establishes that your location is home. If you follow that up with a negated “to be”, it makes no sense, because you’re essentially saying that you “were not” while you were at home.
Essentially like… “When I was at home, I wasn’t at home.” (and no… it’s Buddah-quote material in German :)
The sentence with the DVD is perfect though, because there’s no clash of statements.
Does that make sense?
Oh mein Gott ich habe alles verstanden
HELL YEAH :):):)
Using your abstract extra slots in the beginning of sentences and considering that nicht always precedes what it negates is a cool way of thinking about negation in German.
However, that does not help so much with nicht positioning. I see this first post as an introduction to the subject and guess that part 2 will sort things out.
To me, “whole sentence” negation and “sentence element” are very straightforward concepts, but unfortunately German does not follow them in several cases (eg it does not explain why the examples you classified as wrong are so), that’s what restricts their usefulness. Things would be so much easier if, for instance in your 5 examples above Thomas going to the zoo with Maria, the only neutral sentence was the 5th (which surprisingly is a incorrect sentence) and the other 4 were just focused negations of time, place and who participated in the action. Why German creates a specific element negation scheme and then gives ambiguity to it?!
This “sentence negation” vs. “element negation” is not inherent in the language. It’s rather an attempt at finding a model that helps you predict where to put “nicht” and more importantly, which positions are wrong in a certain context.
However, as you said, it is ambiguous and that is because the idea of “sentence” itself is ambiguous. What “sentence negation” actually means is “Rhema”-negation. The payload. The main event/information of the sentence.
That can be just the verb, or the combination of verb with one object or the combination of the verb with a location and so on. It really depends.
– Ich spiele Fortnite nicht.
This for instance is a classic fringe case. Is that more like “Klavier spielen” (one unit) or is it more like “das Spiel spielen” (verb plus its object). the answer is… it’s up to you, in a way.
– Ich spiele nicht Fortnite-
– Ich spiele Fortnite nicht.
Which is sentence negation, which is element negation… I don’t know. Either one is.
So yeah… this duality is just an attempt at a model, but it’s a pretty poor one in my opinion. At first, everyone is always like “Oh yeah, I get it.” but then it’s just never actually answers anything.
IN order to get the position of “nicht”, you need to think about what your main message is and what elements are integral to the verb in a certain context and sentence. And for that you have to let go of rules and kind of just “trust your gut”.
I’ll go to working on part 2 once I’m done with my moving to Ljubljana :)
After trying to solve this fuzzy puzzle for some days, these are the conclusions I reached so far:
– nicht always negates what it precedes (non-neutral sentence part negation). That’s the easy part
– negating a whole sentence neutrally is arbitrary, ambiguous with sentence part negation and I should just memorize the rules for it.
Maybe I’ll change my mind when I see the 2nd part of your post, but for now that’s the best I have.
Anyway, I have some questions about this post:
1) You say that “nicht” negates the following sentence element and confirms all other sentence elements, that’s why your ex #5 which negates “war” is wrong, because it is paradoxal to not be and to be at the zoo. This is easy to grasp for location, but what about time and company? In this example, I’d would be also confirming I was somewhere yesterday and with Maria?
2) This line of thought kinda works for action verbs, eg “Ich arbeite heute in die Büro nicht”, which would mean I was in the office today doing something, but not working (I do not think people mean that with this sentence, but the neutral negation, so that meaning would require emphasis in “arbeiten” in oral speech to be understood).
However, IMHO it does not work at all for other verbs eg “will”. An example: “Ich wollte heute in der Arbeite mit allen nicht reden”. This would mean I did not want to talk, but I was today in the work with everyone doing something else? That does not make any sense to me.
3) “Ich habe immer noch nicht ihn gehört”. Why is that wrong and the previous ex with “den neuen Song” is correct?
4) I have read in Hammer’s German Grammar book that, in a whole sentence negation, nicht should not precede noun objects, unless it is a object with no article which is part of a fixed verbal phrase (eg “Tennis spielen”). From that, it seems to me that the negation of “den neuen Song” in the Rihanna example makes the negation non-neutral. I am confused here, could you clarify?
Thanks in advance for all help!
Okay, let me see if I can clear it up a little bit :)
First of, you said .. ” and I should just memorize the rules for it.”
That would mean quite a bunch of rules :). I don’t know how many but at least a dozen, I guess.
On to your questions:
1) Think of it as a scenery. The scenery is “yesterday at the zoo with Maria”. And within that scenery something did or didn’t happen.
This doesn’t mean that I can’t negate “with Maria” in the next sentence. It’s just part of the scenery for this one.
Not sure if that was your question, so if not, let me know.
2)
“Ich wollte heute in der Arbeite mit allen nicht reden”.
This means basically that I had I wanted to “not talk” to everyone. The wanting and the “mit allen” are in the positive. It’s overall a weird sounding phrasing that no one would say in practice.
3) “ihn” is a pronoun, so it refers to something that is already part of the conversation. The song was already introduced. Now a likely question is whether or not I have heard it. It’s part of the scenery.
If I put “nicht” in front of it, I am negating “it” (the song) specifically. Nothing wrong with that but if this piece of established scenery, which is likely even the center piece of the conversation at that moment, … if this is what I want to negate I would probably say something like “DEN SONG habe ich noch nicht gehört.”
So… using sentence structure and so on as a means to direct my focus/emphasis.
Does that make sense?
4)
Both versions (nicht before and after “den neuen Song”) have pretty low tension but if you put “den neuen Song..:” before the negation, it sounds a bit as if it has been part of the conversation before. If you put it after “nicht” then that sounds like you’re bringing up this subject.
Not sure if that helped in any way. I really don’t know much about this whole sentence negation vs. part negation theory because it never made sense to me.
Reading my last comment, I noticed the example sentence with “reden” in question #3 works ok if the speaker puts an emphasis in “reden”. Please never mind it. Sorry for the double post; I wanted to edit the prev comment, but it is not possible.