Cultural influence

[petegray]

Nicholas accuses me of litotesising.   I accept the point, and happily
apologise.   So we return to the primary question, where we both seem to
agree, that the expressivity of a language is - at least partially - a
question of balance between linguistic constraints and cultural fashion.

He also says:

> It's rather like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis:

I had intended something a little more concrete.   Nicholas himself gives an
example in his reply, when he says:

>'I'm reminded of the strange fact that in English "I don't like" means "I
>dislike", and that you have to labour and squirm to convey the simple
>meaning "it's not the case that I _like_".'

Perhaps there are more elegant ways of saying it in English, but here, at
least, is an example of a presumably native speaker of English being aware
of the linguistic constraints on his expressiveness.

Peter