notly,
born a nonce word, spreads metalinguistically; expresses an adverbial meaning of negation without negative grammar, i.e. staying in the positive modality and active voice. E.g. I notly see you is formally equivalent to I don’t see you but carries different connotations: depending on context, intonation, setting it might be understood as “I think what I see is not (really) you,” or “I might be able to see you if I tried (but I didn’t),” or even “I don’t see you and I’d rather it stays that way.”
page revision: 1, last edited: 16 Oct 2016 04:06