I was just introduced a new grammar point, the も~も construction as shown on
<https://core6000.neocities.org/dojg/>. I understand the main function of も
and how it is the inclusionary particle and I can follow along with most of
the examples for the grammar point that the site provides, but I can't make
out how sentences with ば (I've only known the form to be the conditional.
Haven't done grammar lookups in j-j dictionaries) are working.

One of the samples sentences provided is

```

    彼は親戚でもなければ友達でもない。
    
```

and the english interpretation is "He is neither a relative nor a friend." My
question is how does なければ, what I would think would be the ば conditional of
ない, work here? Literal English translations aren't doing me much good here if
I try and translate this taking ば as the conditional. Can someone help me
understand how this is working?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-09T00:11:07.840
73810
2020-01-09T02:37:15.840
33404
question
conditionals particle-も
Can ば conditional form be interpreted as a conjunction?
Perhaps a better translation might be "Whilst he is not a relative, neither is
he a friend."
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-09T01:44:13.877
73811
2020-01-09T01:44:13.877
10072
73810
answer