Negation and interrogation

Negation and interrogation are two operations that transform an affirmative declarative sentence — the “base” sentence — without changing its lexical content. To negate is to reverse the truth value of the statement; to question is to turn it into a request for information. Portuguese handles both with notable economy: negation rests on a pre-verbal particle and a system of negative concord, while interrogation, in most cases, requires no reordering of words at all.

Sentential negation: the particle não

A sentence is negated by placing the adverb não (“not”) before the verb (or the auxiliary). Nothing else is required: there is no equivalent of English do-support and no change to the order of the remaining elements.

Only clitic pronouns may come between não and the verb: não o vi (“I didn’t see him”), não me disseram nada (“they told me nothing”). Não typically negates the whole clause, but it may bear on a single constituent in contrastive contexts — Vou hoje, não amanhã (“I’m going today, not tomorrow”) — a case of constituent negation.

Negative words and negative concord

Portuguese has a set of negative-polarity words: the adverbs nunca and jamais (“never”), the pronouns nada (“nothing”), ninguém (“no one”) and nenhum(a) (“no, none”), and the conjunction nem (“nor”). The system’s most distinctive trait is negative concord (so-called “double negation”): when one of these words appears after the verb, the pre-verbal não is obligatorily retained.

The two negative markers do not cancel out — they combine to express a single negation. Piling up several negative terms reinforces the negation rather than undoing it: Nunca ninguém me disse nada disso (“No one ever told me any of that”).

When, however, the negative word precedes the verb (typically as subject or fronted topic), não disappears, because the pre-verbal slot already carries the negation:

Negative word after the verb	Negative word before the verb
Não veio ninguém.	Ninguém veio.
Não aconteceu nada.	Nada aconteceu.
Não falei com nenhum deles.	Nenhum deles falou.

Saying Ninguém não veio is ungrammatical in standard Portuguese. The correlative conjunction nem… nem coordinates two negated terms — Não trouxe nem o livro nem os apontamentos (“I brought neither the book nor the notes”) — while nem alone means “not even”: Nem reparei (“I didn’t even notice”).

Yes/no questions

Yes/no questions (polar questions) differ from the corresponding declarative by intonation alone — a rising contour — and, in writing, by the question mark. There is no subject-verb inversion, unlike in English or French.

An affirmative answer is given with sim (“yes”) or, more idiomatically, by repeating the verb: the question Já almoçaste? (“Have you had lunch?”) is naturally answered with Já (“Already”) or Almocei (“I have”), rather than with a bare sim.

Wh-questions: interrogative words

Questions that seek specific information use an interrogative word, placed at the front of the clause.

Form	Asks about	Example
quem	person	Quem telefonou? (Who called?)
que / o que	thing	Que disseste? (What did you say?)
qual / quais	choice	Qual preferes? (Which do you prefer?)
quanto(s)	quantity	Quantos faltam? (How many are missing?)
onde	place	Onde moras? (Where do you live?)
quando	time	Quando partimos? (When do we leave?)
como	manner	Como se faz? (How is it done?)
porque / porquê	cause	Porque choras? (Why are you crying?)

Very common — and characteristic of everyday European usage — is the construction with the particle é que (“is it that”), which keeps the interrogative at the front without any further change of order:

Cause is distinguished in spelling: porque (the conjunction and clause-internal adverb) versus porquê (the stressed form, used alone or clause-finally): Porque não vieste? but Não vieste porquê? (“Why didn’t you come?”) and Não sei o porquê (“I don’t know the reason”).

Indirect and tag questions

In indirect questions, the question is subordinated to a verb such as perguntar (“to ask”) or saber (“to know”). The polar type is introduced by se (“whether”); the wh-type keeps its interrogative word. Neither takes a question mark or inversion.

Tag questions append to a statement a short formula seeking agreement: não é? (“isn’t it?”), pois não?, está bem? (“all right?”), or a simple clause-final não? — Tu moras aqui, não é? (“You live here, don’t you?”).