APA Dictionary of Psychology

n. in linguistics, the form of a sentence used to make a negative assertion about something rather than an affirmative statement or a question (see interrogative). In modern English, negatives are nearly always formed using not or no and an auxiliary verb (usually be, have, or do). The structural relationship between positive and negative forms of a statement (e.g., between I went and I did not go) is of major interest in generative grammar and psycholinguistics.