When speaking of something done by somebody, can I say "She just did that." to mean "She only did that." (i.e. she didn't do anything else)?
I am asking because in Italian I can use the same word where English uses only and just. What would change is the position of the word. (Compare lo ha appena fatto with ha fatto appena quello.)
Best Answer
Yes, you can say something like...
...but what exactly you mean is entirely context-dependent - you could continue with either of...
Outside of context there's not normally any way to establish whether just means only a little while ago or only that and nothing else.
Regarding OP's secondary question about the meaning being affected by word position...
...could only mean only/nothing but the dishes (she didn't wash the pots and pans). But so far as I can see this doesn't lead us to any useful general principle, given that...
...effectively mean exactly the same in most contexts (contrary to what might have been expected, I didn't know [whatever] until this morning). But there is a case for saying #3 is more suitable when emphasising that [whatever] is some piece of trivial information you happened to come across, and #4 fits better when you want to emphasise how recently you discovered whatever it was.
To summarise: for any given context, the position of "just" might affect meaning (subtly or decisively), but it's not obvious to me this leads to any useful general principles. In essence, "context is everything".