diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.6.0.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.6.0.rst
index a7c9a7eb88221..500f63bd0a51f 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.6.0.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.6.0.rst
@@ -148,6 +148,7 @@ Numeric
 Conversion
 ^^^^^^^^^^
 - Bug in constructing :class:`Series` with ``int64`` dtype from a string list raising instead of casting (:issue:`44923`)
+- Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.eval` incorrectly raising an ``AttributeError`` when there are negative values in function call (:issue:`46471`)
 -
 
 Strings
diff --git a/pandas/core/computation/expr.py b/pandas/core/computation/expr.py
index ff3f259f49955..c91cfd65e3c40 100644
--- a/pandas/core/computation/expr.py
+++ b/pandas/core/computation/expr.py
@@ -693,7 +693,7 @@ def visit_Call(self, node, side=None, **kwargs):
 
         else:
 
-            new_args = [self.visit(arg).value for arg in node.args]
+            new_args = [self.visit(arg)(self.env) for arg in node.args]
 
             for key in node.keywords:
                 if not isinstance(key, ast.keyword):
@@ -704,7 +704,7 @@ def visit_Call(self, node, side=None, **kwargs):
                     )
 
                 if key.arg:
-                    kwargs[key.arg] = self.visit(key.value).value
+                    kwargs[key.arg] = self.visit(key.value)(self.env)
 
             name = self.env.add_tmp(res(*new_args, **kwargs))
             return self.term_type(name=name, env=self.env)
diff --git a/pandas/tests/computation/test_eval.py b/pandas/tests/computation/test_eval.py
index b3b80e8e5db65..dbcf21f778cbf 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/computation/test_eval.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/computation/test_eval.py
@@ -600,6 +600,20 @@ def test_float_comparison_bin_op(self, dtype, expr):
         res = df.eval(expr)
         assert res.values == np.array([False])
 
+    def test_unary_in_function(self):
+        # GH 46471
+        df = DataFrame({"x": [0, 1, np.nan]})
+
+        result = df.eval("x.fillna(-1)")
+        expected = df.x.fillna(-1)
+        # column name becomes None if using numexpr
+        # only check names when the engine is not numexpr
+        tm.assert_series_equal(result, expected, check_names=not USE_NUMEXPR)
+
+        result = df.eval("x.shift(1, fill_value=-1)")
+        expected = df.x.shift(1, fill_value=-1)
+        tm.assert_series_equal(result, expected, check_names=not USE_NUMEXPR)
+
     @pytest.mark.parametrize(
         "ex",
         (