Teacher:Given the Question and Answer pair, detect whether the answer is acceptable or not. Denote acceptable answer as "yes", otherwise denote as "no". An acceptable answer is consistent with the context in question, detailed, long, and uses general knowledge of English. Answers that are not definite and suggest a variety of options are not acceptable answers.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? Solve this instance: Question: Is there a specific rule, or set of rules, that can be followed to know when to use each word? I have noticed that not is usually used with a verb, but I think that there sometimes are exceptions although I can't think of one now.
Answer: Not is a negative adverb; no is a negative quantifier; non- is a negative prefix. Since negation is so important, thousands of idioms use each of these, among other negatives. Consequently there are lots of exceptions to the general rules below. Non- is not a word, but a part of another word, usually a descriptive adjective: non-lethal, non-professional, non-native, non-technical, non-playing (The hyphen is optional.) Each of these mean "anything but ..." -- anything that doesn't kill you is non-lethal, anything that's not technical is non-technical, etc. This meaning contrasts with un- and in-, which refer to opposites instead of complements. No is half of the answer pair Yes/No, shading off vocally into Nah, Nuh-uh, and Uh-uh. But it can also quantify and negate any noun phrase: Some blade of grass ~ No blade of grass; One who saw it ~ No one who saw it. Not is the general negator for verb phrases, including predicate adjectives and nouns. In a verb phrase, not occurs immediately after the first auxiliary verb. If there is no auxiliary verb in the verb phrase, Do-Support supplies a form of do. Not is contracted whenever possible, with auxiliaries or subjects (especially pronouns): He's not interested ~ He isn't interested; She doesn't like it, but not *She not likes it. Any of these negatives (and many others) can negate a sentence, changing its truth value. It's easy to switch between them, too; the sentences below all mean the same thing: They allowed no phone calls. They didn't allow phone calls. No one allowed phone calls. Phone calls weren't allowed.
Student:
yes