Did you know that there are different types of negation? Sometimes negators (“not” words in English) only affect part of a sentence. Other times they affect the entire sentence. Here are two* basic types from Pavey’s (2010, 62) The Structure of Language (Amazon link).

* There is an additional third type, predicate negation (“Mary is unhappy” vs. “Mary is happy”), but it’s less relevant for our purposes here.

In the first sentence (1a), the entire is negated: the event didn’t happen one way or the other (there is no dinner). This is clause negation and the entire proposition is rejected as a whole. In the second sentence (1b), a single phrase is negated. Jake did give Maria something, but it wasn’t roses. The scope of the negation is narrowed from the clause to a single phrase.

In the Greek examples below, we are going to focus on the middle type: phrasal negation. In English phrasal negation is marked only by prosody: where do you put the stress on the sentence. In “Jake didn’t give Maria roses” above, phrasal negation would be clearly marked in speech by extra stress on “roses.” But Greek has additional strategies for marking phrasal negation because of its more flexible word order. This relationship between word order and negation scope in Greek (and sentence stress and negation scope in English) is motivated by information structure. Greek word order primarily involves the ordering of (1) old information and new and (2) assumed information and asserted information (see: A brief note on Greek word order). These categories tend to be referred to with the labels “topic” and “focus”. In clausal negation, the new or asserted information is the negated predicate.

Consider again the English examples above in terms of assertion/focus. In sentence (1a), the assertion (and thus the focus) is the whole predicate: “didn’t cook dinner.” Similarly, in sentence (1b), where the negation is phrasal, the implied and thus assumed information is that Jake certainly did give Maris something, and then the assertion is “not roses.” Negation and focus go hand in hand because both prioritize the new (or corrective) information that the speaker wants to assert. Their shared relationship gives them a natural correlation with each other. This is especially true of phrasal negation: it will always have narrow focus on that negated phrase.

Phrasal negation, where scope of negation falls on an argument or adjunct rather than on the entire proposition can be marked by the syntactic position of the negator, as in example (2):

2. Ἔγνω οὖν ὄχλος πολὺς ἐκ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ὅτι ἐκεῖ ἐστιν, καὶ ἦλθον οὐ διὰ τὸν Ἰησοῦν μόνον, ἀλλʼ ἵνα καὶ τὸν Λάζαρον ἴδωσιν ὃν ἤγειρεν ἐκ νεκρῶν.
   Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead (John 12:9).

Another example is John 12:30. Here the negator has scope over the prepositional phrase διʼ ἐμὲ, which are fronted before the predicate together, as in example (2):

3. Οὐ διʼ ἐμὲ ἡ φωνὴ αὕτη γέγονεν ἀλλὰ διʼ ὑμᾶς.
   Jesus said, “Not for mine benefit is this voice, but for yours (John 12:31).

Instances of negation like this one represented marked usage. The syntactic position explicitly denotes the negation scope. This marked usage with the change in word order makes the narrow phrasal negation easier to recognize.

Still, it is essential to understand that the markedness of narrow negation scope is asymmetrical. The syntactic position of the negator only means something for interpreting negation scope when it is moved out of its normal preverbal position. Above, it has scope over the prepositional phrase.

In the default preverbal position, the negator can denote either negation of the clause as a whole, but also argument scope negation. Consider the example of negation below from example (3):

4. Ὁ πιστεύων εἰς ἐμὲ οὐ πιστεύει εἰς ἐμὲ ἀλλὰ εἰς τὸν πέμψαντά με.
   Whoever believes in me does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me (John 12:44).

The syntactic position of the negator matters for interpretation when the negator is moved out of its normal immediately pre-verbal position. Otherwise, if it does not and remains in the default spot, then negation scope must be interpreted via contextual clues.

On this view, the correct interpretation of a clause such as this one from John 12:35, below in example (4), should take the scope of the first negator μὴ as narrow over σκοτία rather than over the verb. In this case, the negation scope could be rendered into English as, “so that no darkness will overtake you.”

5. περιπατεῖτε ὡς τὸ φῶς ἔχετε, ἵνα μὴ σκοτία ὑμᾶς καταλάβῃ, καὶ ὁ περιπατῶν ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ οὐκ οἶδεν ποῦ ὑπάγει
   Walk while you have the light, so that no darkness will overtake you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going. (John 12:35).

The second negator, οὐκ, is unmarked for scope, but the context best suggests scope over the whole proposition or clause.