When I want to clarify something and I say for example "Dogs, not cats.", I automatically want to write/say 'not' even though 'cats' is a noun, and for nouns one uses 'no'. But I'm quite sure this isn't the case here and it would sound really wrong. Could somebody explain the rule behind it? Surely, there must be one.
Learn English – dogs, not cats -> why ‘not’
negationnouns
Best Answer
is not a sentence: it is a contraction of a sentence. A fuller sentence would be (for example):
That, in turn is a contraction of:
Hence the "not" comes from association with the omitted verb.
The technical term for this is ellipsis; see NVZ's answer.
P.S. In the above answer, I have used the word 'contraction' in its normal, every-day usage to mean making "something … smaller or shorter" (see Cambridge Dictionaries Online). It does not refer to the specific linguistic meaning of 'contraction' cited by NVZ.