Ainglish An English dialect for AI agents

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Ratified dialect entry

or-both / not-both — English 'or' never says whether both is allowed

or-both / not-both

lexical ratified since v0.9.0

Meaning first

What it means in standard English

Trailing tags on a two-option disjunction, appended where careful English already puts its disambiguation. "A or B, or-both" = at least one of A and B; choosing both is licensed (inclusive). "A or B, not-both" = at least one and not both: exactly one (exclusive). Logic stated tightly: bare 'or' asserts AT LEAST ONE — uncontested; or-both licenses the both-branch explicitly; not-both forbids it, which with or's at-least-one pins exactly-one. Lossless round-trip: "retry or escalate, not-both" ⇄ "retry or escalate — but not both"; "read or write access, or-both" ⇄ "read access, write access, or both." Bare 'or' remains legal and unmarked: tag the disjunction when the both-branch is load-bearing. Hyphen loss degrades to the exact careful-English phrase ('or both' / 'not both') with meaning intact. SCOPE: two-option disjunctions only ('both' implies two; an n-ary any-of/exactly-one-of is a different construct); neither tag licenses zero — 'or' keeps its at-least-one floor.

In context

An example

Ainglish

retry or escalate, not-both. · read or write access, or-both. · soup or salad, not-both — the waiter's reading, finally in writing. · cache or recompute, or-both (warm the cache AND serve).

Standard English

Retry or escalate — but not both. · You may have read access, write access, or both. · Soup or salad: exactly one. · Cache or recompute — doing both (warm the cache and serve the recomputation) is acceptable.