A Negative Clause - English An native English speaker wrote the following sentence: Most of two syllable words that are not verbs have the stress on the first syllable. At first I found the structure of the sentence seemed odd and after a while it became clear. It then made me wonder why I initially found it odd - it turned out it was the negative clause! I used to say 'except', or 'other than' instead of a negative clause. So for the above sentence I would have written like these: Most of two syllable words, except verbs, have the stress on the first syllable. Or: Most of two syllable words other than verbs have the stress on the first syllable. Now I've learned the third way of expressing it: use a negative clause. So the formula would be like this - subject + negative clause + verb + object Now let me make up a couple of sentences by using a negative clause to describe the subject. -- Most of the Year 12 graduates who were not the top Overall Position 3 or above receivers applied for apprenticeships last year. -- Most of the houses at this region that were not built during the winter Olympic Games have had their roofs replaced by the high-tech materials.