[sseagull]

Hard to quantify, but how that sentence is said and the corresponding body language dramatically changes the meaning.

Is the person smiling? Yelling? Pointing angrily? Making a motion like they are thirsty? Making puppy eyes? Laughing like it is an inside joke?

It can change from a mere friendly request to a demand possibly backed up by violence.

[gjygj]

Sure, but how many bits of information are in those modifiers you mentioned? Maybe you can modulate it in 200 different ways?

Surely way less than in the actual sentence, since you have millions of different posibilities for the words: go/store/soda

[mym1990]

I think you’re missing out on the almost infinite possibilities of how body language and tone can give off different moods or intentions of a person. But these cues aren’t often processed in a literal sense, our brain can pick things up without us knowing exactly why something is wrong or different, it just is. It’s very intuitive based I think.

[gjygj]

In that case a transcript of a conversation would be almost worthless since it's depriving us of the body language or the tone.

[mym1990]

Yes, I would say if you gave me a random transcript of a conversation, it would be pretty worthless without any additional context. We are talking about active communication here, not a record of communication happening at some point in time.