 The tendency for a semantically contradictory negation of an unmarked positive value, whether affixal (\(x\) is unfair/unhappy) or clausal (I don’t like him), to be strengthened (as either an “online” or conventionalized process) to a contrary of the positive predication. As contraries, Chris is happy and Chris is unhappy allow an unexcluded middle, since Chris can be neither happy nor strictly unhappy; similarly, I don’t like him is generally understood as stronger than a mere assertion that it’s not the case that I like him.