nei'ai NEIhAI experimental cmavo

double-negative toggle: every odd-counted explicit usage makes negation additive; unmentioned or every even-counted explicit usage makes negation multiplicative.

It applies to the entirety of the current bridi and all future ones until toggled again; multiple but separated usages of this word within the same bridi behave as if they were adjacent. "Additive negation" means that multiple negatives just intensify, but do not cancel, one another. For example in English: "I ain't seen nothin'" means that the speaker is very emphatically claiming to have seen nothing of interest. This is the standard operation for negation in Spanish. "Multiplicative negation" means that negatives cancel, but do not intensify, one another (possibly taking a neutral or abstentional state). "I did not see nothing" in this mode means that the speaker did indeed see something. Note that multiplicative double-negatives are not necessarily equivalent to affirmatives in general. "I like cheese" is an affirmative statement and is not equivalent to "I do not dislike cheese", which is a multiplicative double-negative (and which may indicate a reluctant acceptance of cheese or a neutral feeling toward cheese). In this mode, an even number of negatives in a given statement is not negative and an odd number of negatives in a given statement is not positive. This word applies to all negatives in the text, whether they are free words or rafsi. This word also, but less dramatically, applies to affirmations: in additive mode, multiple affirmatives intensify one another ("I am indeed very much so going!" is a strongly emphasized positive statement); in multiplicative mode, they simply reduce to a single affirmation (for like example, "I am going"). This means that care must be taken: In additive mode, an affirmative marker will partially cancel with a negative particle in some way, reducing its intensity and possibly bringing it to a neutral statement ("I am indeed - not - going" is a neutral statement in this mode, similar to "I may be going"; English does not really have the ability to express such things); in multiplicative mode, an affirmative coupled with a negative simply reduces to the negative, possibly strengthened by a factor equivalent to the intensity of the affirmer ("I am indeed not going" is a clear way of saying that the speaker will not go).


In notes:

go'ai
last bridi (with its modifiers)