Inflection is a very important thing in speech.
To prove this point, read this sentence aloud:
"Have you pooped a muffin today?"
Now, there are about 15 different ways to read this, but let's just
take a look at the difference in a couple.
If you read it like "
Have you pooped a muffin today?",
essentially you're inquiring as to if someone has, in fact,
excreted a delicious baked good from their posterior.
This is the default form of the sentence.
Another is, "Have
you pooped a muffin today?"
This is a bit different, rather than asking if someone else
has dropped a healthy load of banana-nut muffin,
you're bragging about your own.
You might as well tag, "...because I sure have" on the end.
A third is "Have you
pooped a muffin today?",
where you're basically just asking
"I know you've encountered muffins today, but, perchance, did that happen to involve the exiting of your rectum from said muffin?"
An equally disturbing version is "Have you pooped
a muffin today?"
Which equates to "Look, I know you've pooped a muffin, that's no big news, but I'm just wondering, was the number of muffins you pooped greater than or equal to 1?"
Moving right along, "Have you pooped a
muffin today?"
is kind of like "Hey there, I know your day was good, but just
how good was it?"
Our final example is "Have you pooped a muffin
today?"
Which sounds like something either a doctor or psychotherapist would be asking.
