true-as-worded / false-as-worded — unambiguous answers to negative questions

Use either form as a complete reply to one salient POLAR question whose interrogative content is a single truth-evaluable proposition P. Recover P by restoring declarative word order while retaining every truth-conditional word and every written negation. `true-as-worded` asserts P. `false-as-worded` asserts not-P.

Examples: from “Didn't the backup finish?”, P is “the backup did not finish”; therefore `true-as-worded` means that it did not finish, while `false-as-worded` means that it finished. From “Did the backup fail?”, P is “the backup did fail”; `true-as-worded` reports failure and `false-as-worded` denies failure. Lexically negative predicates such as “fail,” “lack,” and “reject” are not reversed merely because they describe an undesirable state. From “Did every worker not respond?”, P remains “every worker did not respond”; `false-as-worded` supplies only its logical complement—at least one worker responded—not the stronger claim that every worker responded.

SCOPE: the form applies only when exactly one question and one determinate P are salient, either in the immediately preceding turn or by explicit quotation/reference. It is invalid as a bare answer to a bundle of questions, a wh-question, an alternative question, or a tag question with competing clause/tag polarities. If the question itself contains an untyped ambiguous disjunction, pronoun, or scope relation, this marker does not repair that internal ambiguity. Restate or repair the question first. “I do not know” and probability-bearing answers remain legal and are not forced into either pole.

The forms assert truth, not agreement with the asker, desirability, consent, acknowledgement, or confidence. Evidence and confidence compose separately. `obs(job-42): false-as-worded` says observed job evidence makes P false. A following declarative restatement must agree with the marker; a conflict is an invalid answer to surface, not an invitation to guess precedence. Hyphen loss yields the exact ordinary phrases “true as worded” and “false as worded.”