How would you say the Negation of following sentences?
- She is supposed to be happy.
- It is supposed to be hard.
- Tomorrow is supposed to be a off day.
- He is supposed to be there.
- He is supposed to know that.
- She is supposed to be able to come to party tomorrow.
I thought that just put "not" between verb to be and supposed,
but according to my dictionary, "be not supposed to" expresses the prohibition. However the degree of prohibition is not strong compared with "must not" or "can not".
For example,
- You are not supposed to smoke here.
- You are not supposed to use it.
These sentences express the "prohibition".
If my dictionary is true, when I say "She is not supposed to be happy", it would not make sense.
How should I say them?
For example,
- She can't be happy.
- It can't be hard.
- Tomorrow may not be a off day.
- There's no way that he is there.
- There's no way that he knows that.
- She might be impossible to come to party tomorrow.
Are these correct?
Best Answer
Your choice of example is slightly unfortunate since there is an element of expectation involved. Simply using not is correct since
describes an expectation you have, in reality she may or may not actually be happy, so the opposite is
which is the negative of your expectation. The expectation is created by using supposed.
Saying
is a negative expectation of something you are not allowed to do, but you would only be told this if you were smoking or about to smoke.
To be forbidden to do something, you would be told
just as
forbids her from being happy.
Hopefully this helps.