Rescission is a form of relief which is available in respect of a variety of transactions (contract, gifts and conveyances) where one of the parties is subject to a vitiating factor (such as duress, fraud or misrepresentation) and she wants to get out of or ‘set aside’ the transaction. Rescission allows her to reverse the transaction. It has been said that ‘[t]he basic objective of the relief given upon rescission is to restore the parties to their original positions or, where rescission occurs in equity, as near to those positions as may be’. There is no requirement for the party seeking to rescind to suffer loss in the sense in which this is understood in the context of compensatory damages: she merely has to point to a vitiating factor. Although the party seeking to rescind can set aside the transaction, it is not voided: rather, it is rendered ‘voidable’. In other words, a voidable contract is valid and effective unless and until the plaintiff elects to rescind it. However, once a contract is rescinded it ‘is treated in law as never having come into existence’, although it is recognised that it formerly existed. All unperformed obligations under the contract are extinguished once a contract has been rescinded. The contract is extinguished as from the beginning (ab initio).

Negative systems have historically undergone several major changes that were caused by the overall properties of the grammatical system in particular periods. The functions of negatives in any period had to be consonant with the predicate structure, especially the structure of verbal predicates. This chapter addresses the developments of negatives that are most relevant to the establishment of the negative system of Contemporary Chinese rather than exhaustively surveying all negatives in history.