And the Radak already wrote that the word לא falls on an individual man, while the word אין falls on man in general. However, we do find the word אין also on an individual man - אין יוסף בבור (Joseph was not in the pit)⁷⁸⁶ and אין האיש בביתו (For my husband is not at home)⁷⁸⁷. And we explained that there are two derivations associated with the word אין – one geminate אֵין and the other hollow אַיִן. And any place where the word אין comes on the negation of a particular matter, it is geminate.

footnotes: ⁷⁸⁶ Genesis 37:29. ⁷⁸⁷ Proverbs 7:19.

And moreover, with a singular pronoun, it is איננּו איננּי, where the letter נ always has a diacritic dot. But with a plural pronoun, there is no diacritic dot, since it is hollow, and it negates the general.

(And the difference between the geminate word אֵין and the word לא is, as we wrote in the previous rule, that the word אין negates the subject of the expression, comes next to the subject, and is the opposite of יש, while the word לא negates the predicate.)

Nevertheless, the word אין that comes alone is usually hollow, and it negates the general.