one more time

[navi tasan]

1) They talked to me rudely one more time.
2) They talked to me rudely, one more time.

3) They talked to me one more time rudely.
4) They talked to me one more time, rudely.

In which of the above cases:

a) They had talked to me rudely before and then they talked to me rudely again.
and in which cases:
b) They had talked me before, but not rudely, then they talked to me again and this time they did it rudely.
and in which cases:
c) On some occasions they had talked to me without being rude, on other occasions they had talked to me rudely and this time they talked to me rudely.

Gratefully,
Navi

 

[GoesStation]

It's not worth trying to parse these sentences.

 

[Rover_KE]

Did you read these sentences somewhere or is it a hobby of yours to construct deliberately ambiguous sentences and ask us to make sense of them?

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you all very much,

A special thanks to Piscean.

Azz is my wife and we share an interest in languages in general and in English in particular. I used to be a translator and developed some kind of anxiety about ambiguity at that time. I basically stopped translating because of it, but the obsession lingered on. I transmitted it to my wife as well, but she doesn't fret about such things as much as I do. With me, it has become a kind of obsession. It does make me anxious, but it is not really that bad. A few years ago, it was worse.

I thank you all very much for your kind replies and I really appreciate the help. You have to understand that I am not doing this to bother others. You see, I'd have to go through a lot of trouble to come up with these sentences if I did it deliberately. But most of the time they just pop up in my head.

In any case, I assure you there is no ill will involved here. There are easier ways to be a pain!

Gratefully,
Navi

 

[tedmc]

Azz is my wife and we share an interest in languages in general and in English in particular. I used to be a translator and developed some kind of anxiety about ambiguity at that time. I basically stopped translating because of it, but the obsession lingered on. I transmitted it to my wife as well, but she doesn't fret about such things as much as I do. With me, it has become a kind of obsession. It does make me anxious, but it is not really that bad. A few years ago, it was worse.

I am not sure if I got the meaning of anxious and fret right, but why would people be anxious and fret about something they are interested in and enjoy doing?

 

[emsr2d2]

Whilst I admire you for being so fascinated with one aspect of the English language, I would suggest that this is not the best use of your time. If you are no longer translating, you don't need to worry about such ambiguity. May I suggest that, instead of coming up with sentences (or posting ones that just "pop up in your head"), you save your efforts for posting potentially ambiguous sentences that you come across in real life.

 

[tedmc]

I don't see how translations from one language to another would require you to come up with variations of the same sentences, so much so that you are at a loss as to which to choose from. In any case, I think translations cannot be exact as the language to be translated to needs to be tweaked to sound natural.

 

[PeterCW]

The sentences are not natural colloquial English. The natural way of saying this in the UK would be "they talked rudely to me again" or just "they were rude to me again".

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

1) They talked to me rudely one more time.
2) They talked to me rudely, one more time.

3) They talked to me one more time rudely.
4) They talked to me one more time, rudely.

In which of the above cases:

a) They had talked to me rudely before and then they talked to me rudely again.
and in which cases:
b) They had talked me before, but not rudely, then they talked to me again and this time they did it rudely.
and in which cases:
c) On some occasions they had talked to me without being rude, on other occasions they had talked to me rudely and this time they talked to me rudely.

Gratefully,
Navi

I have no idea.

Do you understand the difference between "one more time" and "again"?

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you all very much,

To me 'one more time' is only one more time. 'Again' is unclear as to how many more times one did something.

He has gone into the kitchen again.

Here it is not clear how many more times he has gone into the kitchen.

That's the difference I see.

Gratefully,
Navi