Position of 'not' in a negative interrogative?

The key here is Heavy Noun Phrase Shift. Here's how it works:

First, let's start with the canonical (declarative, affirmative) version:

[The person who acts upon this advertisement and accepts the offer]_subject puts himself to some inconvenience at the request of the defendants.
Then we'll add the dummy auxiliary do. We need this auxiliary for two reasons: to negate the predicate, and to mark the clause as interrogative through inversion:

[The person who acts upon this advertisement and accepts the offer]_subject does_auxiliary put himself to some inconvenience at the request of the defendants.
At this point, we can negate the predicate:

[The person who acts upon this advertisement and accepts the offer]_subject does_auxiliary not_negator put himself to some inconvenience at the request of the defendants.
And now we can invert the subject and auxiliary, turning our declarative clause into an interrogative clause:

Does_auxiliary [the person who acts upon this advertisement and accepts the offer]_subject not_negator put himself to some inconvenience at the request of the defendants?
Last, because our subject is so long and syntactical complex, and because this is particularly formal English, we can optionally make use of the rare Heavy Noun Phrase Shift, pushing our subject to the right out of its basic position, past the negator:

Does_auxiliary not_negator [the person who acts upon this advertisement and accepts the offer]_subject put himself to some inconvenience at the request of the defendants?

When these conditions aren't met, we can't shift the subject noun phrase to the right:

Does_auxiliary she_subject not_negator like ice cream?

*Does_auxiliary not_negator she_subject like ice cream?　(ungrammatical)

The subject she isn't long or syntactically complex enough to count as as a "heavy" noun phrase, so it can't be shifted past the negator.

In contrast, the contracted form doesn't doesn't involve Heavy NP Shift; -n't is a suffix, and so doesn't is a single word which inverts with a subject without any of these restrictions:

She_subject doesn't_{negated-auxiliary} like ice cream.

Doesn't_{negated-auxiliary} she_subject like ice cream?

For more discussion, see my previous answer.

snailplane

Posted 2014-12-17T09:35:24.740

Reputation: 30 097

+1. Thanks. Would you please clarify how doesn't differs? Based on your answer above, I'm guessing that the only difference relates to Now the auxiliary is the single word *doesn't*, so if we apply subject-auxiliary inversion in your other linked answer. In other words, the contracted Doesn't ...? only involves subject-auxiliary inversion and matches with ... does not. Whereas Does not... above involves Heavy Noun Phrase Shift? – AYX.CLDR – 2014-12-17T10:29:19.777

@LawArea51Proposal-Commit I updated my answer. – snailplane – 2014-12-17T11:10:24.237

@snailboat Thank you effusively! I especially cherish your update because my comment and guess above look wrong! – AYX.CLDR – 2014-12-17T11:12:10.833

I wonder whether it's preferable to use doesn't or does not before Heavy Noun Phrases, or they would be equal in sense. – CowperKettle – 2014-12-17T12:08:12.790

1@CopperKettle Does not is only possible in particularly formal style, usually in written English but occasionally in prepared speeches and the like. – snailplane – 2014-12-17T12:11:10.213

Rhetorical 'gravity' (or some might say 'ponderousness') can allow the shift even if the subject isn't "heavy". – Tᴚoɯɐuo – 2014-12-17T12:25:52.680

The quote you give has the "not" in pretty much the analogous position that the OP here is expecting, which is not where that word actually appeared in their passage, so this answer doesn't appear to explain anything about the word order, which is the only point of this question. – Nathan Tuggy – 2018-03-30T23:19:56.763

Position of 'not' in a negative interrogative?

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