Negation beyond pas: jamais / rien / personne / plus / aucun / que
Summary
Keep ne before the verb and replace pas with jamais (never), rien (nothing), personne (nobody), plus (no longer) or aucun (no/none); ne … que means 'only' and is restrictive, not a true negation.
Explanation
Beyond the basic ne … pas, French has a family of negative words that take the place of pas while ne stays before the conjugated verb. The main ones are ne … jamais (never), ne … rien (nothing / not anything), ne … personne (nobody / not anyone), ne … plus (no longer / not any more) and ne … aucun(e) (no / not any, an adjective that agrees with its noun). Each expresses a specific kind of negation, but the frame is always the same: ne hugs the front of the verb and the negative word follows.
Position in compound tenses is the key subtlety. Short negative adverbs — jamais, rien, plus — behave like pas and go between the auxiliary and the past participle: je n'ai jamais vu, je n'ai rien dit, je ne suis plus venu. By contrast, personne and aucun refer to a person or thing and come after the past participle: je n'ai vu personne, je n'ai trouvé aucune erreur. With a simple tense everything is straightforward: il ne mange rien, elle ne sort jamais.
Rien and personne can themselves be the subject of the sentence. They then move to the front, but ne is still required before the verb: personne n'est venu (nobody came), rien n'est sûr (nothing is certain). This is one of the few cases where the negative word precedes ne, and forgetting ne here (« personne est venu ») is a typical mistake. Aucun can also be a subject pronoun: aucun n'a répondu.
Watch the restrictive ne … que, which looks negative but means 'only': je n'ai que dix euros means 'I have only ten euros', not 'I don't have ten euros'. Because it is not truly negative, the article after it does not turn into de (je ne bois que de l'eau, with the partitive kept), unlike after a real negation. You can stress it with rien que or replace it with seulement when you want to avoid ambiguity.
Rule of thumb: pick the one negative word that carries your meaning, keep ne (or n') in front of the verb, and never add pas on top of jamais / rien / personne / plus / aucun — that would be a double negation. Place jamais / rien / plus before the participle and personne / aucun after it. In casual speech the ne is often dropped (j'ai rien vu, y a personne), but keep it in writing and formal registers.
Examples
Je ne mange jamais de viande. — I never eat meat. (ne … jamais; after the negation the partitive du becomes de.)
Je n'ai rien entendu et je n'ai vu personne. — I heard nothing and I saw no one. (rien precedes the past participle; personne follows it.)
Personne n'est venu à la réunion. — Nobody came to the meeting. (personne is the subject, yet ne stays before the verb.)
Il n'habite plus à Paris. — He no longer lives in Paris. (ne … plus = no longer; plus goes before the participle in compound tenses.)
Je n'ai aucune idée. — I have no idea. (aucun(e) is an adjective and agrees with its noun (idée is feminine).)
Je n'ai que dix euros. — I only have ten euros. (ne … que means 'only' — restrictive, not a true negation.)
Common mistakes
Je ne mange pas rien.
Je ne mange rien.
Words like rien, jamais, personne, plus and aucun already replace pas — they are the negative element themselves, so you must not add pas as well. Say « je ne mange rien » (I eat nothing), never « je ne mange pas rien », which would literally stack two negations. Keep ne before the verb and put exactly one negative word after it. The only word that combines with these is plus when you mean 'no longer anything', as in « je ne mange plus rien » (I no longer eat anything), where plus and rien express two different ideas, not a doubled pas.
Prerequisites
Related rules
negationword-orderindefinites