Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulrich
Fascinating how much interpretation and options are possible.
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... when you infer the most probable intonation for each instance. Intonation is a extremely powerful way to convey meaning and most of the phrases discussed have the expectation of certain intonations (or not).
Imagine someone replying in English "Everybody agrees on that", first time meaning "I'm informing you about this" and then meaning "Isn't it obvious, you dimwit?". Wouldn't those be two very different meanings for the same written phrase? There's something similar going on with many of the sentences discussed in this thread.