tagadás

Tagadás is a Hungarian term that designates negation or denial. It originates from the verb tagad- (to deny) and is used in several senses: the act of denying a claim in everyday speech, the linguistic marking of negation, and the logical operation that yields the negation of a proposition. In philosophy and logic, tagadás refers to the operation that transforms a statement into its opposite or falsehood.

In logic, tagadás is the negation operator, commonly represented by the symbol ¬ or ~. If p is a proposition, its tagadás is not p. In classical logic, double negation holds, meaning that not not p is equivalent to p and p implies not not p. In intuitionistic logic, however, not not p does not automatically imply p, reflecting a more constructive interpretation of negation.

In Hungarian grammar, negation is typically expressed with the particle nem placed before the verb or predicate. Other negative constructions use words such as sem (with sem...sem for “neither… nor”), senki (nobody), semmi (nothing), and negative quantifiers. Tagadás can also affect larger structures, influencing the scope of negation in questions, conditionals, and subordinate clauses.

Beyond grammar and logic, tagadás encompasses denial in discourse, such as denying a claim, refusing a request, or rejecting an accusation. It also appears in legal, political, and rhetorical contexts, where the act of denying or disputing a proposition is central to argumentation and decision-making.

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