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What part of speech is the word "not"?
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What part of speech is "not"? I googled it. Everyone says it's exclusively an adverb. But I must disagree because sentences like "He is not my friend." can exist. Is "not" modifying "friend" or "is"?
Top Comment: it’s modifying the verb “is”. It is an adverb. It’s just the word used to convey negation and other languages sometimes express these in different ways like inflections but for English, it’s an adverb. Note it can also be used for other verbs: I have not eaten. (modified eat in the present perfect form) He did not run. (this is kind of weird construction on English’s part but i’m fairly certain that “not” is modifying the word “did” there but it doesn’t matter either way because the full meaning is “did run” and it’s the running (or technically, the doing of the running) which is being negated. In any case, “not” always affects the verb. “Be” and all its variations (am/is/are) is very importantly a verb but it’s easy to forget that sometimes