jutfrank
VIP Member
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2014
- Member Type
- English Teacher
- Native Language
- English
- Home Country
- England
- Current Location
- England
I'm saying that part 9 of this explanation is wrong.
Modifiers like barely do not make a sentence negative. Only the word not (and its relatives never/nobody/nowhere, etc.) in either the subject or operating on the auxiliary make a sentence negative.
He barely speaks, doesn't he?
![Check mark button :white_check_mark: ✅](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/2705.png)
he barely speaks, does he?
![Cross mark :x: ❌](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/274c.png)
To be clear (!), I'm not saying that the latter sentence here is not possible. You can of course use a positive tag on a positive sentence, but it creates a different kind of tag, with a different use.