Cultural influence
petegray
petegray at btinternet.com
Fri Jun 4 19:19:04 UTC 1999
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
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