Force printing of excluded axis annotations

Howdy,
    This should be simple, but I am finding that I can't find a simple
solution.  I have a plot to which I am manually adding the annotations
to the y-axis with this command:

axis(2, c(-4,-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7),labels=c(-4,-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7),cex.axis=8)

The issue is that, apparently, R doesn't think that the -1 can fit,
even though there is most certainly enough space.  Is there a way to
force R to print all the annotations I give it, regardless of
proximity or to reduce the space it believes it needs? Thank you.

- Fincher