When ‘still’ means ‘not yet’

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss the employment of expressions meaning ‘still’ to signal the negative counterpart of ‘still’, ‘not yet’, without an overt negator. I show that this phenomenon is found in languages from across the globe and that it surfaces in four recurrent types of environments, namely when a ‘still’ expression is used (i) without an overt predicate, (ii) with a less-than-finite and/or dependent predicate, (iii) with a predicate belonging to a specific actional class, or (iv) when the expression occupies a determined position in the clause. I lay out how each of these types finds a functional explanation and I also discuss some patterns of employment that build on these ‘still’-as-‘not yet’ uses.