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Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Spanish ‘‘todavía’’: Continuity and transition§
Érika Erdely a,1,2, Carmen Curcó b,2,*
a
Spanish Department, Center for Foreign Students -- UNAM, National Autonomous University of Mexico,
Avenida Universidad 3002, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacán, 04510 México DF, Mexico
b
Institute for Research on Philosophy & Foreign Language Center -- UNAM, National Autonomous University of Mexico,
Circuito Mario de la Cueva s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacán, 04510 México DF, Mexico
Received 8 February 2015; received in revised form 22 October 2015; accepted 26 October 2015
Abstract
This paper presents an analysis of the meaning of Spanish todavía, traditionally considered as a durative time adverb, sometimes
translatable into English as still or yet but not always. Our main point is that the semantic content of this lexical item consists of two
procedural components. The first one is a basic continuative aspectual sense, while the second instructs for the contextual incorporation
of an assumption about a potential transition. This approach has several virtues. First, it allows us to maintain a parsimonious analysis,
which shows that there is no need to treat todavía as two distinct lexical items with different polarities each, as some have proposed
(Bosque, 1980). We suggest, in contrast, that in Spanish todavía can be analysed as a single lexical item, and we account for its
behaviour both in affirmative and in negative clauses. Second, we argue that the procedural component of the meaning of todavía
explains its distribution patterns. It also clarifies the origin of the implicatures of various strengths about the future that may emerge when it
is used. Finally, our characterisation allows us to provide an explanation of the way in which the wide range of meanings and pragmatic
effects that are attached to the use of todavía (e.g. scalar readings, emphasis and concession) can be derived from the basic semantic
sense we propose.
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Todavía; Spanish; Lexical semantics; Procedural meaning; Aspect; Scalar meaning
1. Introduction
The conceptual domain of duration is partly expressed in language by a network of time adverbs whose individual
meanings and semantic relations may be complex to analyse. In Spanish, the lexical item todavía has been studied by
various authors, either as a central topic or merely in passing, but a definite answer about its content is not easy to provide.
Traditional grammars normally treat it as a durative time adverb, or at least describe the variety of its meanings as deriving
from a basic temporal durative sense that arguably it encodes.
§
This work was possible thanks to the support of project PAPIIT IN401115, sponsored by UNAM-DGAPA, and a CONACYT grant to Érika
Erdely.
* Corresponding author at: Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, Circuito Mario de la Cueva s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacán, 04510
México DF, Mexico. Tel.: +52 55 5622 7210.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (É. Erdely), [email protected] (C. Curcó).
1
Tel.: +52 55 5622 2477.
2
Both the authors contributed equally to this study.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.10.007
0378-2166/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
2
É. Erdely, C. Curcó / Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
Todavía has a close syntactic and semantic relation with the adverb ya, and so the two are often analysed in parallel
(e.g. Magaña, 2007; Erdely, 2013). The adverbial pair they form is in fact one of the most complex oppositions of the
Spanish adverbial system. Given the amount of attention that similar pairs have received in various other languages, this
is probably the case in other linguistic systems too (Bosque, 1980).
The conceptual space that todavía and ya cover in Spanish can be roughly compared to what is encompassed by
lexical sets such as {noch, schon, nicht mehr} in German, {yet, already, anymore, still} and {encore, déjà, non plus} in
French, in a way that is only tentatively represented in Fig. 1. We include this schema here with the sole aim of illustrating
how a similar conceptual space is structured in these four languages, but our claims are restricted to Spanish todavía.
A semantic account of todavía should be able to explain not only its durative sense, but also the wider range of
meanings it displays, which we describe in Section 2. It should also illuminate the relation it holds with other elements in
the adverbial subsystem that encode aspects of duration in Spanish. Here we build on some previous approaches and
aim at providing one more step in such direction.
In this work we address two main issues about todavía. First, we attempt to characterise its semantic meaning in a
parsimonious and productive way that can also shed light on the synchronic links among the various senses and
interpretations it conveys today. We defend the view that todavía retains traces of a conceptual meaning component that
contains a semantic feature [+CONTINUITY], but we suggest that it also contains procedural features that have not been
taken into account adequately so far. A second problem we focus on is whether in Spanish there are indeed two lexical
items under a single form todavía, an idea that has been put forward before (Bosque, 1980). We argue that our
characterisation of its meaning makes such postulation unnecessary.
The paper is organised as follows. In Section 2, we present a set of senses of todavía that were derived from a corpus
constructed on the basis of the data in the Current Spanish Reference Corpus (Corpus de Referencia del Españ ol Actual,
CREA), a database of the Spanish language compiled, developed and maintained by the Royal Academy of the Spanish
Language (Real Academia Española, RAE), which was launched in 1997. Its content includes statistically organised
linguistic material, collected from a wide variety of text types produced both in Spain and Latin America in the span of the
past 25 years.3
The meaning taxonomy we derived from it was complemented with a survey of the examples considered in the
specialised literature on todavía, which we review in Section 3. We find that one of the main problems in assessing most
previous approaches derives from the fact that they tend to lack a clear distinction between what is semantically encoded
by todavía, and what is pragmatically conveyed by its use. In our discussion of earlier views, we attempt to clarify this issue
and then present our own proposal. In Section 4, we provide further arguments to support our characterisation of
the semantic meaning of todavía and show how the various interpretations it receives can be derived from it. Finally, we
give reasons against the suggestion that there are two lexical items under the form todavía and argue instead for a unitary
treatment.
2. An overview of senses
In order to survey the wide variety of meanings attached to todavía, we examined all entries for this lexical item in the
CREA corpus for the year 2000 and we collected those that appear in the specialised literature on the subject. In the
CREA corpus we found 1251 instances of todavía in 562 documents from all genres and from diverse dialects of Spanish.
We also registered the meanings in examples taken from the literature on the subject that we review in Section 3. We
classified these instances in the following categories.
a.
Aspectual (continuous). It predicates the continuity of a state of affairs, or the iteration of the event denoted by the
verb.
(1)
María todavía vive
en México.
María still
live-PRS.3SG in Mexico
‘María still lives in Mexico’
(2)
María todavía come
en ese restaurante.
María still
eat-PRS.3SG in that restaurant
‘María still eats in that restaurant’
3
http://www.rae.es/recursos/banco-de-datos/crea REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑ OLA: Data base (CREA) [on-line]. Corpus de la Real Academia.
http://www.rae.es (accessed on several dates in 2013).
[(Fig._1)TD$IG]
É. Erdely, C. Curcó / Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
English
German
French
3
Spanish
yet
noch (nicht)
(pas) encore
todavía (no)
already
schon
déjà
ya
anymore
nicht mehr
non plus
ya (no)
still
noch
encore
todavía
Fig. 1. Lexical items parallel to todavía/ya in other languages.
b.
Scalar. It places an entity as a member of a graded category.
(3)
Milpa Alta es
todavía Distrito Federal.
Milpa Alta be-PRS.3SG still
District Federal
‘Milpa Alta is still (part of the) Federal District’
(4)
A Juan
todavía lo
aguanto,
pero
OBJ-Juan still
3SG.OBJ stand-PRS.1SG, but
a Pedro
no.
OBJ-Pedro not
‘I still stand Juan, but not Pedro’4
c.
Emphatic. It stresses the value of a relationship between members of a graded category.
(5)
El
servicio de autobuses es
todavía peor que el
The service of busses
be-PRS.3SG still
worse than the
del
metro.
of-ART.M metro.
‘The bus service is even worse than the metro’s’
(6)
Te
querré
más todavía.
OBJ.2SG love-FUT.1SG more still
‘I will love you even more’
d.
Concessive. It introduces an unexpected consequence of a previous premise.
(7)
Lo
ayudé
y
todavía me
reclama.
OBJ.3SG help-PST.1SG and still OBJ.1SG complain-PRS.3SG.
‘I helped him and nevertheless he complains’
(8)
Es egoísta
y
todavía lo
justificas.
be-PRS.3SG selfish and still OBJ.3SG justify-PRS.2SG
‘(S)he is selfish and yet you justify him/her’
e.
Focus marker. It indicates the element of the utterance that is not presupposed, that is introduced or contrasted.
Todavía can occur in this function with adjectives, as in (9), and verbs as in (10),
(9)
La todavía incipiente idea
The still
incipient idea
‘The still incipient idea’,
(10)
Ayer
todavía vino
yesterday still
come-PST.3SG
‘Yesterday (s)he still came’
with temporal markers as in (11)
(11)
Todavía hoy
la gente pide ese
modelo.
Still
today the people ask for-PRS.3SG that model
‘Still today people ask for that model’,
and with numerals or quantifiers as in (12)
4
Notice that in this kind of evaluative scales there is a temporal reading available too. An utterance of ‘‘La salsa todavía me gusta, pero el
reguetón ya no’’ (I still like salsa, but not reggaetton) may mean ‘‘It is the case that I continue to like salsa, but I have stopped enjoying reggaeton).
It is important to keep this in mind when we discuss our proposal, because it accounts for this type of ambiguities too.
4
É. Erdely, C. Curcó / Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
(12)
Debe
pagar
todavía dos juegos /muchas deudas.
Have to-PRS.3SG pay-INF still
two games/ lots
debts.
‘(S)he has to pay still two games/lots of debts’5
Each of these senses of todavía has been discussed in the literature to a greater or lesser extent.6 In what follows we
review previous accounts and point out the difficulties they raise. We concentrate our discussion of these views mainly on
two issues: how to explain the communication of continuity, anteriority and posteriority conveyed by todavía, and whether
or not todavía affects aspectually the predicate it modifies. We also argue against the need to postulate two words for
todavía under a single form.
3. Previous accounts
There is substantive agreement in the literature with regard to the element of continuity encoded by the word todavía.
Lexicographers assume this to be one of its primary meanings. For instance, the Dictionary of the Spanish Language
(Diccionario de la lengua españ ola DILE) defines the basic meaning of todavía as ‘‘up to a certain moment from previous
time’’).7
The continuity involved in the meaning of this word is linked to a sense of anteriority, as is also established in
most available semantic treatments of it. As we shall see, some have suggested that there is, in addition, an element
of posteriority attached to the lexical meaning of todavía. Intuitively then, todavía primarily encodes temporal
continuity from the past, through the present and to the future. Discrepancies arise, however, over the best way to
characterise the communication of these dimensions (continuity, anteriority and posteriority) in todavía. In sum, there
is agreement about the notions conveyed by todavía but disagreement about the precise way in which they are
transmitted.
The ideas of Horn (1969) on the English set {yet, already, anymore and still } have inspired much work on similar lexical
items in other languages, and also in Spanish. Horn was first to suggest that these lexical items communicate two
assumptions, one of which is asserted and the other, he argued at the time, presupposed. So, for English still, anymore,
already and yet he proposes the following array of assertions and presuppositions.
(13)
asserted
still
t0(O)
yet
:t0(O)
already t0(O)
anymore :t0(O)
t0 is the present moment
ti is a specific point of time
O is a state of affairs
<previous
>later
presupposed
(9i)(i < 0 & ti(O)
(9i)(i > 0 & ti(O)
(9i)(i > 0 & ti(O)
(9i)(i < 0 & ti(O)
(adapted from Horn, 1969)
Notice that for Horn still and anymore presuppose anteriority, while yet and already presuppose posteriority.
Influenced by this work, Bosque (1980) suggested that in Spanish there is a similar distribution of meanings, expressed
as follows:
6
In some of these examples, todavía can be replaced by aún, but not in others. Although some grammars assume that todavía and aún are
synonymous (e.g. Butt and Benjamin), the relation between these two lexical items is intricate and complex and it constitutes an object of study in
its own, which unfortunately we have to leave out of this paper.
5
Although the fact that todavía can be used as a marker of focus is noticeable and it emerges both in our corpus and in the literature, a full
account of the meaning of todavía and its interaction with focus semantics is an ample and complex topic which we cannot develop within the
limits of this paper. Notice, besides, that there is some overlap between examples such as (11), where a focus marker function arises, and
examples such as (1) and (2), which we classified as aspectual, as one reviewer remarked. These reasons lead us to confine ourselves to
acknowledging this use of todavía without further discussion of it in this work.
7
The Dictionario de la Real Academia Españ ola (Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, DRAE) became the Dictionary of the Spanish
Language (Diccionario de la lengua españ ola, DILE) in its latest (23rd) edition, launched in 2014. From 1780 until 1992, it was produced, edited
and published by the Real Academia Española (Spanish Royal Academy, RAE). Since 1992, the RAE and the twenty one Latin American
Spanish Language Academies collaborate in its production. This dictionary also registers concessive and scalar readings of todavía.
É. Erdely, C. Curcó / Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
(14)
todavía
todavía
ya
ya
asserted
t0(O)
:t0(O)
t0(O)
:t0(O)
presupposed
(9i)(i < 0 & ti(O)
(9i)(i > 0 & ti(O)
(9i)(i > 0 & ti(O)
(9i)(i < 0 & ti(O)
5
English
still
yet
already
anymore
(Adapted from Bosque, 1980)
The conceptual space that in English is covered by four lexical items, in Spanish seems to be distributed between two
forms. Nonetheless, Bosque suggests that the conceptual area that is lexically covered in English by still and yet is also
covered by two distinct polarity items in Spanish under the single form of todavía.
3.1. How many ‘todavía’ in Spanish?
Central to us is Bosque’s idea that there are two todavía in Spanish that are distinguished in terms of polarity. Positive
polarity todavía, he argues, presupposes the anteriority of the predicate (i.e. its retrospective holding), while negative
polarity todavía presupposes the posteriority of the predicate (i.e. its prospective holding).
Bosque disagrees with Horn on the status of the two assumptions communicated by todavía. Instead of going along
with Horn’s idea that the assumptions on the right column are presuppositions, Bosque argues that they are in fact
conventional implicatures. There are good reasons for this. For one thing, the presupposed assumptions do not survive
the negation of the utterance that gives rise to them, which is what one would expect if they were semantic
presuppositions. Bosque does not give any explicit reasons to treat these assumptions as Gricean conventional
implicatures, he just states that this is what they are. However, it is not clear what his reasons would be, since he then goes
on to argue that only in the case of negative polarity todavía this ‘implicature’ can be cancelled. Since Gricean
conventional implicatures are not normally cancellable, the status of the assumptions that indicate whether the predicate
held in the past and/or will hold in the future remains uncertain.
Here is one crucial observation Bosque makes. Consider the following utterances:
(15)
a.
b.
María no vive
aquí todavía.
María not live-PRS-3SG here yet
‘María doesn’t live here yet’
María vive
aquí todavía.
María live-PRS-3SG here still
‘María still lives here’
The examples in (16a-b) below are meant to show a contrast between (15a) and 15(b) when certain meaning
elements are cancelled. While there is no contradiction in uttering (16a), which cancels the implicated (presupposed
for Horn) (9i)(i > 0 & ti(O) in (15a), cancelling the same meaning element for (15b) results in a contradictory statement,
as shown in (16b).
(16)
a.
b.
María no vive
aquí todavía y
no
María not live-PRS-3SG here yet
and not
‘María doesn’t live here yet and will not live here’
? María vive
aquí todavía, pero hasta
? María live-PRS-3SG here still
but until
va a vivir
aquí.
live-FUT.3SG here
ahora no vivía
aquí
now not live-PST-3SG here
However,
?‘María still lives here, but until now she didn’t live here’
From such facts Bosque concludes that we need to distinguish two different lexical items under the form todavía, in a way
that parallels the English pattern for yet and still: ‘Si no establecemos ninguna distinción entre los dos adverbios todavía
que incluye el cuadro. . . no podremos explicar estos hechos’ (If we do not establish a distinction between the two adverbs
todavía included in the figure ( ), we will not be able to account for these facts) (Bosque, 1980:159).8 This conclusion,
however, is problematic. Because conventional implicatures are attached to lexical meaning, they are not cancellable.
What (15a) and (16a) show is merely that the assumption (9i)(i > 0 & ti(O) is not a conventional implicature of Bosque’s
8
In German, noch parallels todavía and covers the semantic space that in English is covered by two different lexical items (yet and still).
6
É. Erdely, C. Curcó / Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
negative polarity todavía, precisely because it is possible to have it cancelled without contradiction. On the other hand,
(15b) and (16b) strongly suggest that (9i)(i < 0 & ti(O) can be a conventional implicature of positive polarity todavía, since it
cannot be cancelled without contradiction. What we will argue is that it is a procedural component of its meaning. We shall
go back to this issue in Section 4.9
However, this is not the only argument in favour of postulating two different lexical items under the term todavía.
Considerations of aspectuality, provide a further reason to ponder such possibility in Spanish. Some analyses suggest
that todavía can affect aspectually the predicate it modifies. On the assumption of two todavía, Bosque (1980) argues that
positive polarity todavía is durative, while negative polarity todavía, is punctual. So for instance, while dormir is durative in
(17a), in (17b) it is ingressive and hence punctual.
(17)
a.
b.
Juan duerme
todavía.
Juan sleep-PRS.3SG still
‘Juan still sleeps’
Juan no duerme
todavía.
Juan no sleep-PRS.3SG yet
‘Juan doesn’t sleep yet’
Notice that it is not enough for a predicate to be durative in order to be able to be modified by so called positive polarity
todavía. Consider (18)
(18)
a.
b.
?Pedro es
viejo todavía
Pedro BE-3s-PRES old still
?‘Pedro is still old’
Pedro no es
viejo todavía
Pedro no is-3s-PRES old yet
‘Pedro is not old yet’
Todavía can be used with durative verbs only if their durativity is subject to interruption or change, either lexically or
contextually. Hence, (18a) is not acceptable. Todavía can be used to express a certain duration from the past about the
predicate only when it is manifest that there can be (or there could have been) a potential change in the state of affairs it
describes. Other authors have noticed this and have attempted to build this piece of content into the characterisation of the
meaning of todavía. So, for instance Garrido (1993) suggests the following description:
(19)
t(p) = presup{a(p)} & sup {not(p)} & p10
(19) indicates that an assertion of the form todavía p presupposes that p was true before ({a(p)}), that in the context of
interpretation there is a supposition that p does not hold (sup{not(p)}), and that it is asserted that p holds (p). Our own
proposal is close to this view. However, Garrido’s characterisation, as it stands, does not capture the notion of continuity
precisely, and it does not take into account the potential for transition that we believe is central to the meaning of todavía. It
allows for the possibility of interruptions of the state of affairs described by the predicate in the past. So, it would predict
that an utterance of (20a) would be equivalent to an utterance of (20b), while they clearly are not.
(20)
a.
b.
La reina está
embarazada
The queen BE-3s-PRES pregnant
‘The queen is still pregnant’
La reina está
embarazada
The queen BE-3s-PRES pregnant
‘The queen is pregnant again’
todavía
still
otra
vez
another time
9
Grice defined conventional implicatures as content that does not contribute to the truth conditions of the utterance (hence, non semantic for
some), but that is nonetheless attached to the lexical meaning (hence, not conversationally implicated). Procedural meaning is not an exact
parallel to this notion, since there is procedural meaning that does contribute to truth conditions (e.g. personal pronouns and indexicals). Because
there is also conceptual meaning that makes no contribution to the truth conditions of an utterance (e.g. illocutionary adverbials), the conceptualprocedural distinction does not coincide with the distinction between truth-conditional and non truth-conditional meaning either.
10
Available in http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero10/operador.html. This was previously published in Garrido (1993).
É. Erdely, C. Curcó / Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
7
But most importantly, it does not sort out clearly the status of each of the assumptions conveyed by todavía, and it leaves
unexplained some compositionality issues.
In sum, what previous analyses leave us with is agreement about a bunch of notions that are conveyed by this word -continuity, anteriority, posteriority, and potential change -- and a total confusion about the status of the assumptions that
communicate such notions: are they presuppositions, assertions, implicatures, contextual suppositions? What are the
sources of meaning that activate them? In the next section we provide a characterisation of the meaning of todavía in
procedural terms that is more precise in this regard. The way we establish the status of the assumptions conveyed by
todavía makes the right predictions about the interpretation of the utterances where it occurs, including changes in lexical
aspect such as those illustrated by (17) above. This leads us to our second issue: the aspectual force of todavía. Previous
approaches do not help us decide between two available views on this point.
3.2. The aspectual force of ‘todavía’
Some authors, like Bosque (1980), believe that todavía contains an aspectual semantic feature that affects the
predicate,11 while others argue that todavía only inserts the predicate in a universe of two or more phases, without
necessarily attributing to its meaning an specifically aspectual semantic feature (Horn, 1969; Löbner, 1999; Garrido,
1993).12 Here we argue that there is not need to postulate a durative positive polarity todavía and a punctual negative
polarity todavía to account for aspectual effects. Instead we try to show that the aspectual effects of todavía are a
consequence of the procedural status of its meaning, ad that there is no need to postulate an aspectual semantic feature
into the encoded meaning of todavía itself.
4. A procedural account
Procedural meaning was first proposed as a semantic category by Blakemore (1987) with the aim of accounting for the
difference between content words and connectives such as but, although, after all, etc. The distinction parallels that
between representation and computation in cognitive science. While conceptual meaning maps words onto concepts,
procedural meaning provides instructions on how to manipulate conceptual representations, and more generally, it
activates cognitive procedures independently available to an individual that are specially useful in comprehension
(Wilson, 2011). While some procedural words are non-truth conditional, some others do have truth-conditional content.
Recent work has shown that we should not assume that it is words that carry either procedural or conceptual meaning
(Escandell-Vidal and Leonetti, 2011). Rather, words are packages of semantic features that can themselves be either
conceptual or procedural, so that lexical items can encode both concepts and instructions simultaneously. In addition,
conceptual representations are linked to encyclopaedic knowledge. Procedures are not. Hence, procedures are rigid, that
is, the instructions they encode must necessarily be carried out during interpretation and therefore, they constitute
linguistic meaning at their purest form (Escandell-Vidal and Leonetti, 2004, 2011).
Conceptual representations, in contrast, are malleable in context, they can be elaborated on, enriched, loosened or
otherwise adjusted pragmatically (Wilson and Carston, 2007). Concepts are flexible but procedures are not. In fact, they
are typically able to coerce conceptual meaning, and they cannot be semantically modulated. The instruction encoded by
a procedural feature must be executed and the result of this computation must appear in the final interpretation (EscandellVidal and Leonetti, 2011).
We propose that the semantics of todavía is given by the characterisation in (21)
(21)
Todavía s = 9 conti (s) in C, where
s is a conceptual representation, tr indicates transition, C is a context in which tr(s ! :s) is manifest, and i denotes
a variable that ranges across conceptual domains of continuity, whose value is contextually fixed on each
occasion of use.
The domains of continuity denoted by i can be time, space, categories, worlds or states of affairs.
In the case of negative predicates the meaning of todavía, we claim, remains the same:
11
Girón (1991), Fernández Lagunilla and De Miguel (1999), and García Fernández (1999) seem to share this view, although their discussion
affects mainly the meaning of ya.
12
Horn (1969) and Löbner (1989, 1999) discuss the meaning of words whose meaning is close to that of todavía in English and German.
8
(22)
É. Erdely, C. Curcó / Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
Todavía :s = 9 conti (:s) in C,
where C is a context where tr(:s ! s) is manifest, and i denotes a variable that ranges across conceptual domains
of continuity, whose value is contextually fixed on each occasion of use.13
There are several differences between our proposal and the proposals of Bosque (1980) and Garrido (1991, 1993), and
some varying consequences too. First, instead of assuming that the notions of continuity, transition, anteriority and
posteriority are all part of the lexical meaning of todavía, we suggest that only continuity, anteriority and transition are
semantically encoded in this word. Posteriority is but a potential contextual effect that may or may not arise in each
particular occasion of utterance.14
Second, although the notions of continuity, transition and anteriority are of course concepts, the nature of the semantic
meaning of todavía seems to us to be procedural to a large extent, and oriented towards context selection. Our proposal is
that todavía instructs the hearer to construct a context of interpretation with the following two assumptions:
(a)
(b)
There is continuity from some point in the past in s
There is a manifest potential for transition from s to :s
It also instructs the hearer to find a relevant value for i as a conceptual domain across which the continuity of the state of
affairs s holds. It must be stressed that the formulation of (a) and (b) is given in conceptual terms here, but nonetheless
they must both be understood as instructions or computations represented mentally as such, and hence, as procedural
content. The result of carrying out such instructions is reflected conceptually in the final interpretation.
We have already pointed out that todavía modifies only durative predicates that are potentially subject to
transformation. We believe that this is a direct consequence of its procedural semantic nature, and definitely not of some
aspectual semantic feature encoded in it. Our formula instructs the hearer to find a context of interpretation where the
assumption that there is a potential for transition from s to :s is manifest. Procedural instructions are not malleable. They
must invariably be executed and their conceptual output is necessarily incorporated into the resulting interpretation. This
means that conceptual representations from the linguistic form of the utterance and from the context of interpretation may
be adjusted to allow for the procedural element to operate upon them (Escandell-Vidal and Leonetti, 2011). In this regard,
notice that the only way to interpret an utterance of (18a) (Juan es todavía viejo) is to find a context where the condition of
being old can be transformed, such as in (23a). The same goes for the predicate ‘dead’. We do not normally expect a
potential transition for the predicate ‘dead’, so an utterance of (23b) is odd. However, (23c) seems perfectly possible and
natural because there is an accessible context that allows for the procedural instruction to go through.
(23)
a. Esta escena sucede
cuando Fausto es
todavía viejo.
This scene occur-PRES.3sg when
Fausto be.PRES.3sg still
old
‘This scene takes place when Fausto is still old’
b. ? Mi canario está
todavía muerto.
My canary be-PRES.3sg still
dead
‘My canary is still dead’
c. María Magdalena y
Salomé compraron
ungüentos
Mary Magdalene and Salome buy-PS-PFV.3pl ointments
cuando Jesús estaba todavía muerto.
when Jesus be-PS-IPFV.3sg still dead
‘Mary Magdalene and Salome bought ointments when Jesus was still dead’
In fact, before rejecting utterances like (18a) and (23a-c) as ungrammatical -- which they seem not to be --, our tendency is
to find a context where the modified predicate is subject to change, even if only metaphorically. In other words, whether
14
Although we include anteriority as a conceptual notion in our semantic description, (‘continuity from the past’) we do not want to suggest that
because of this todavía structures time in phases. This is why we do not include anteriority as such in our formula. We do not believe that todavía is
a phase quantifier. We realize, however, that the encoded continuity we postulate as a semantic feature of the content of todavía is not
prospective for reasons we discuss below. Some retrospective continuity, however, does seem to be encoded in todavía as suggested by
Bosque’s examples such as (17b) (Juan no duerme todavía) discussed above.
13
Notice that the variable i accounts for the ambiguities mentioned in 3. Because i can be fixed in a number of ways, it can be fixed as the
temporal domain or as an evaluative domain, hence the potential for ambiguity. An important point to remark is that this approach has an answer
to a possible objection that the temporal readings of todavía are conceptual while others are procedural: they are all procedurally derived, and they
all result from one particular way of fixing the value of i.
É. Erdely, C. Curcó / Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
9
utterances of the sort Luis está todavía muerto (Luis is still dead), Luis es todavía un anciano (Luis is still an old man), La
iglesia está todavía quemada (The church is still burnt down), etc. are acceptable is not entirely a linguistic issue (as
Bosque also points out), nor is it a totally extralinguistic fact about our interpretation abilities and ‘‘the context’’. It is rather
the result of an interpretation process driven by the procedural semantic content of todavía. Todavía gives the hearer
procedural instructions on context selection. It indicates that the predicate must be processed in a context where there is
continuity of the predicate from the past, and where a potential for transition is manifest.15 If such a context can be
accessed or constructed, the utterance will be acceptable. If not, it will be inadequate. This is the effect of the procedural
status of the [+CONTINUITY]and [+TRANSITION] semantic features encoded in the meaning of todavía.
The procedural nature of [+TRANSITION] has one further consequence that our account predicts. Remember that for
Bosque, examples such as (17a-b) repeated below for the sake of clarity, provide a further argument to defend the
existence of two lexical items under the form todavía.
(17)
a.
b.
Juan duerme
todavía.
Juan sleep-PRS.3SG still
‘Juan still sleeps’
Juan no duerme
todavía.
Juan no sleep-PRS.3SG yet
‘Juan doesn’t sleep yet’
He suggests that positive polarity todavía is durative, while negative polarity todavía is punctual. However, our formula
makes the punctual interpretation of (17b) fully derivable solely from the procedural status of the meaning of todavía.
Because of its procedural nature, the [+TRANSITION] feature must be forcefully interpreted, given the rigidity of procedural
meaning in general. So, in interaction with procedural [+TRANSITION] in todavía, the conceptual [+DURATIVE] feature of sleep is
coerced into a [+INCHOATIVE]resulting interpretation. In other words, what is adjusted in the resulting interpretation, as
expected, is the conceptual meaning encoded by the lexical aspect of the predicate, and the procedural instruction is thus
fulfilled. The major advantage of conceiving the meaning of todavía as procedural is, precisely, that it allows us to account
for this type of effects.
We still have to account for the element of posteriority that emerges in some examples above, and which Horn (1969)
and Bosque (1980) include in their semantic descriptions depicted in (13) and (14) above. In contrast with them, we
believe that the communication of posteriority is not derived from a conceptual semantic feature encoded in todavía. We
want to argue that it is a consequence of an implicature that is derived from the procedural [+TRANSITION] feature, which
makes manifest the assumption that there is (or there has been) a potential transition.
Being manifest, however, is not the same as being relevant.16 If the effects of this manifest potential transition add
significantly to the overall relevance of the final interpretation of the utterance, a strong implicature will be derived. If not,
the implicature will be only weak, if at all. It is the own relevance of the manifest potential transition in the whole context that
is responsible for the implicatures of posteriority that the speaker may or may not derive from the utterance.17 Such
implicatures may point to a possible posterior phase linked to the predicate, but not necessarily. To illustrate this, consider
the contrast between (24) and (26).
(24)
(25)
15
On the telephone:
Juan:
Hola, señora García, soy Juan, amigo de la primaria de su hija María. Le perdí la pista hace
años y le llamo para preguntarle cómo puedo ponerme en contacto con ella.
[Hello Miss García, it’s Juan, a school friend of your daughter’s. I lost track of her long time
ago and I am calling you to ask you how I can contact her]
Ms García: María todavía vive aquí. Si quieres llámala en la noche y la encuentras.
[María still lives here. Call her tonight if you like and you’ll find her]
In the future María will not live here
We do not use manifest here in its ordinary sense, as merely referring to an assumption that is evident to an individual, but in the more
technical sense where an assumption is manifest to an individual to the extent to which he is capable of representing it mentally, and of holding it
as true or probably true at a given moment (Carston, 2002:378).
16
The degree to which an individual is capable of mentally representing an assumption and holding it as true or probably true at a given moment
is the manifestness of the assumption to the individual. An assumption is relevant to an individual at a given time, however, if and only if it has
some positive cognitive effects in one or more of the contexts accessible to him at that time (Carston, 2002:380).
17
The relevance of the potential for transition rests on the amount and importance of the cognitive effects derived directly from it.
10
É. Erdely, C. Curcó / Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
In this case, the implicature about the future whose content is depicted in (25) above is not very relevant, so it is unlikely to
be strongly attributed to the speaker. The potential for transition is rather relevant with respect to the past, but notice that
this is contextually and not linguistically established.18
However, in an utterance of (26), the implicature in (27) adds a lot to the relevance of the utterance, so it will most likely
be one of its derived strong implicatures.
(26)
(27)
A: Este será el regalo de Juan para cuando se case con María.
[This will be Juan’s present for his marriage with Maria.]
B: Pero si Juan está enamorado de Ana.
[But he is in love with Ana]
A: Todavía.
In the future Juan will not be in love with Ana.
It makes no sense to consider (25) and (27), and in general such prospective assumptions, either as presuppositions or as
conventional implicatures of an utterance with todavía. For one thing, they are cancellable, as shown by (28) and (29) below.
(28)
(29)
María todavía vive aquí, y según se ven las cosas, es posible que siga viviendo aquí para siempre.
[Maria still lives here and, as it seems, she may go on living here forever]
Juan todavía está enamorado de Ana, y parece imposible que se enamore de alguien más.
[Juan is still in love with Ana, and it seems impossible that he should fall in love with someone else]
Communicated content that is derived from a combination of pragmatic principles, lexical meaning and contextual
assumptions is cancellable and is standardly treated as conversationally implicated. Cancellability is not a feature of
conventional implicatures, nor of semantic presuppositions. What is semantically driven in the use of todavía is the need to
construct a context where a potential transition is manifest. What is extralinguistic, and hence pragmatic, is the relevance
of such transition for future or past states of affairs.
On the other hand, our proposal allows for the same treatment of todavía in affirmative and in negative contexts.
Consider again Bosque’s example, which he uses to defend the existence of two lexical items under a single word.
Bosque argues that there is no contradiction in uttering (30), while (31) is contradictory and hence anomalous.
(30)
(31)
María no ha
encontrado piso todavía,
María not have-PRS-3.SG find-PTCP flat still
y
es
probable que nunca lo encuentre.
and be-PRS-3.SG likely
that never it find-SBJV-PR.3sg
‘María has not found a flat yet, and she is unlikely to find it ever’
? María vive
aquí todavía,
María
live-PR.3sg here still
pero hasta ahora no vivía
aquí.
but until now not live-PST-IPFV.3sg here.
‘María still lives here, but until now she didn’t use to live here’
Notice, first, that what is cancelled in (30) is a conversational implicature, while in (31) it is the [+CONTINUITY] procedural
feature. The first is cancellable without contradiction, the second is not. Since it is procedural, it is a rigid element that must
be interpreted.
Because Bosque proposes that negative polarity todavía conventionally implicates that there will be a posterior
moment where the predicate will hold, while positive polarity todavía conventionally implicates that there was an
antecedent moment where the predicate also held, he finds the dissimilar effects of cancelling these so called
conventional implicatures in (30) and (31) as reasons to think of todavía as two different words.
We believe instead that the contrast stems from an erroneous characterisation of the meaning of todavía. For Bosque,
as for Horn, positive polarity todavía only conveys anteriority, while negative polarity todavía conveys posteriority and
transition. Our proposal is that posteriority is not part of the encoded meaning of todavía, neither in positive nor in negative
18
We go along with the relevance theoretic view of implicature derivation, according to which conversational implicatures are costly, and hence
are only derived if they add to the overall relevance of the utterance. (Breheny et al., 2006). In this particular case, besides, it is also the case that
the [+TRANSITION] feature pertains to the past, since young people are expected to leave their parents’ home at some stage.
É. Erdely, C. Curcó / Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
11
contexts, but only a conversational implicature that is derived from the relevance of the potential for transition in the future.
In all cases, prospective information is derived pragmatically, if at all. This is why (30) is acceptable. For us, todavía
semantically encodes notions of anteriority, continuity and transition in the way we have explained. Notice that if we try to
cancel any of these, the outcome is as anomalous as Bosque’s example in (31), both in negative and in affirmative
contexts:
(32)
(33)
?María todavía no ha
encontrado piso,
María still
not have-PRS.3sg find-PTCP flat
pero hasta ahora lo ha
encontrado.
but until now it have-PRS.3sg find-PTCP.
?‘María has not found a flat yet, but until now she has found it’
?María todavía vive
aquí,
María still
live-PRS.3sg here
pero hasta ahora no vivía
aquí.
but until now not live-PST-IPFV here.
?‘María still lives here, but until now she didn’t use to live here’
The oddity of these utterances does not have to do with their polarity, but rather stems from the status of the assumptions
that are cancelled. What makes of (32) and (33) odd utterances is the inaccessibility of a context where the continuity of
the predicate is broken. So, we conclude that we do not need to postulate two lexical items for todavía neither on the basis
of the (non) cancellability of some aspects of the meaning of todavía, nor on aspectual grounds.
Before drawing this paper to a close, we show how variations along the range of possible conceptual domains to fix the
variable i give out the scalar readings described in the second section above.
4.1. Scalar cases
Non temporal cases of todavía like the following have been treated in a number of ways. In (34) we illustrate a scalar
case where the elements involved correspond to locations in space, and in (35) and (36) to properties and states of affairs.
(34)
(35)
(36)
Denia todavía está
en Alicante, pero Gandía está
Denia still
be-PRS.3SG in Alicante, but Gandía be-PRS.3SG
en Valencia.
in Valencia.
‘Denia is in Alicante (near the border with Valencia), but Gandía is in Valencia (just past the border)’
A Juan
todavía lo
aguanto,
pero
OBJ-Juan still
3SG.OBJ stand-PRS.1SG, but
a Pedro
no.
OBJ-Pedro not
‘I bearly stand Juan, but not Pedro’
Pedro es
todavía más alto que Juan.
Pedro be-PRS.3SG still
more tall than Juan
‘Pedro is even taller than Juan’
Some authors (i.e. Bosque, 1980:121) claim that the effect of todavía is to set the entity they modify in a pragmatic scale
that the hearer must know (we would rather say the hearer must be able to access). For German noch, a word whose
content is close to that of todavía, Löbner (1989:204) proposes that the scale in question is a lexically set parameter.
However, for Garrido (1993) such a scale is not necessary to account for this kind of examples. He argues that nontemporal meanings can be explained by his semantic formula, stated in (19) above (t(p) = presup{a(p)} & sup {not(p)} & p).
Such meanings, he suggests, are merely the result of introducing in the context of interpretation the supposition that what
is the case is the opposite of what is predicated. So, when stating that Pedro es todavía más alto que Juan (Pedro is still
taller than Juan), the word todavía is supposed to contradict the expectation that being taller than Juan is not applicable to
Pedro (Garrido, 1993:376). This seems odd to us. Why should the use of todavía convey the denial of an expectation?
Why should such an expectation arise in the first place? In any case, the denied expectation seems to be that it is difficult
to be taller than Juan, not that being taller than Juan is not applicable to Pedro.
We believe there is another explanation that follows from our characterisation. Notice that the encoding of [+CONTINUITY]
implies the existence of at least two almost identical contiguous entities, be it points in time, properties, or states of affairs,
12
É. Erdely, C. Curcó / Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
and thus it creates a basic set or category. Besides, the encoding of [+TRANSITION]profiles a border for that category, and
also a certain order between the continuous entities, by placing one of them close to the border or limit of the category to
which they belong. The two semantic features encoded by todavía thus render it conceptually prone to induce scalar
effects, because its use easily evokes a graded category pragmatically instantiated on each occasion of use.
So, for the example in (36) what is relevant is not an expectation that being taller than Juan does not correspond to
Pedro, but rather the mandatory introduction in the context of interpretation of the assumption that there is a transition.
Juan is contextually seen as the limit of a scale -- say, the graded category of tall guys --,19 and todavía predicates a
continuity that contradicts such limit. It is not an accident that (36) (Pedro es todavía más alto que Juan) can be
paraphrased by Pedro es incluso más alto que Juan. In other words, Pedro is included in the category as its new limit.
In what follows we apply to some scalar cases the semantic formula we propose. We will see how the [+CONTINUITY]we
postulate is interpreted as continuity in different conceptual domains, thus yielding a variety of meanings.
4.1.1. Spatial continuity
In temporal cases, our formula todavía (:s) = conti (:s) in a context where tr (:s ! s) is manifest, conti is interpreted as
continuity in time, that is, i = TIME domain. The first case of scalar variation occurs when the variable i is fixed to cover the
spatial domain. If i = SPACE, then todavía predicates a spatial continuity for cases like (34) (Denia todavía está en Alicante,
pero Gandía está en Valencia), and as indicated in our formula, it makes manifest [+TRANSITION] in space too. So, in an
utterance of (34), todavía indicates the continuity of being in Alicante in a context where the spatial transition from Alicante
to Valencia is manifest.
4.1.2. Subjective continuity
What we call subjective continuity refers to cases where the speaker expresses a subjective point of view, a value or an
attitude towards a conceptual content. For instance, if we apply our formula to an utterance of (35) (A Juan todavía lo
aguanto, pero a Pedro no), the domain in question will be set by the word tolerate which gives access to a concept that
sets the value of i as i = THE SET OF THINGS THAT CAN BE TOLERATED,and which induces rankings within a property (BEING
TOLERABLE). In such context, todavía indicates the continuity of tolerating in a context where the transition or boundary from
what is tolerable to what is not tolerable is manifest. Here, the relevant domain that fixes the value of i is the domain of
personal assessment for the concept TOLERATE.The manifest transition is not from tolerating Pedro to not tolerating him, but
from tolerating one individual to tolerating another.
4.1.3. Continuity and comparison
In this section we consider cases where todavía is followed or preceded by comparative adverbs and scalar particles
such as más (more), menos (menos), such as mayor (higher), menor (lower), mejor (better) and peor (worse), as for
instance in (37):
(37)
Te
querré
más todavía.
OBJ.2SG love-FUT.1SG more still
‘I will love you even more’
In (36) (Pedro es todavía más alto que Juan) i is fixed as the domain of TALLNESS,accessed via the word tall. Todavía hence
indicates continuity in a scale that goes from being tall to being taller, where it is manifest that Juan is assumed to be on the
limit of the tallness scale in virtue of the [+TRANSITION] feature. In (37) the value of i is fixed as the LOVEdomain, accessed via
the word querré, and [+TRANSITION]gives access to a contextual assumption of a limit to love. What is stated by todavía is
that on the love scale there is continuity from that assumed limit alongside the same scale (quantified love). In both cases
the limit of the scale is manifest as a potential for transition. The continuity is surprising or unexpected in a context where
there is an expectation of a transition across the limit of the scale, so the [+CONTINUITY]feature gains relevance, the
predication is set closer to the boundaries of the emerging graded category and thus todavía has an emphatic function.
What is unexpected is the existence of the possibility of being taller than Pedro, of loving someone beyond the assumed
limit for love, and so on.
4.1.4. Continuity and transgression
Finally, when the combination of [+CONTINUITY]and a transition potential encoded by [+TRANSITION]occurs in contexts
where the persistence of a feature or state of affairs is unexpected, a concessive sense arises. Consider (38) and (39):
19
This is an extra linguistic contextual assumption of the speakers.
É. Erdely, C. Curcó / Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
(38)
(39)
13
Comió
tres platos
y
todavía pidió
postre.
eat-PST.PRF.3sg three courses and still
order-PST.PRF.3SG dessert
‘He ate three courses and still ordered a dessert’
Te
ayudo
y
todavía me
reclamas.
2SG.OBJ help-PRS.1SG and still
1SG.OBJ complain-PRS.2SG
‘I help you and still/yet/nevertheless you complain’
Our formula here indicates the continuity of an action (to eat, to complain) in a context where a transition from carrying out
the action to not carrying it out is manifest.
There is a close conceptual relation between continuity and concession that was often been noted (e.g. Greenbaum,
1969; Hirtle, 1977; König and Traugott, 1982). Persistence of a given state of affairs is continuity. Persistence of a given state
of affairs in a context containing adverse factors that would normally render such persistence unlikely amounts to
concession.
What we see in (38) and (39) is an event or a series of events that in standard conditions should lead to a manifest
transition that does not take place, but that is both manifest and relevant. That is, persistence is unexpected. For the
speaker of (38), what is expected is that someone who ate three dishes will reach a ‘‘food asking/having’’ limit, will put an
end to persistence in eating, and hence will not have a dessert. Someone who has been helped, as it is stated in (39), will
presumably reach a limit from ‘‘complaining’’ to ‘‘not complaining’’ and perhaps be grateful, so the continuity of the act of
complaining is unexpected. The otherwise expected transition from asking for more food to not asking for more food, from
complaining to not complaining does not take place and instead a contextually unexpected continuity is predicated, with
the transition between states made manifest. Given the premises in the context, the conclusion is unlikely, so the
predicated state of affairs is unexpected and the resulting interpretation is concessive.
Similar ideas have been put forward to account for the concessive uses of German noch (König, 1977) and English still
(Michaelis, 1993). Here we just want to remark that such uses are not always parallel to concessive uses of todavía. For
instance, the examples in (40), taken from Michaelis (1993) are possible in English but impossible in Spanish, which
requires some other marker of concession.
(40)
a.
b.
Yes, Harry beats his dog. Still, he is a nice guy.
Sí, Harry golpea a su perro. *Todavía/de todas formas/aún así/a pesar de eso/es un buen tipo.
They tried to help him, but he still died.
Trataron de ayudarle, pero *todavía/de todas formas/aún así/a pesar de eso murió.
It seems that todavía cannot easily be interpreted as a marker of concession when it functions as a sentential adverb in
Spanish. A thorough explanation of this fact requires a detailed analysis of the contrast between todavía, de todas formas,
aún así, a pesar de eso and other ways of marking concession.
5. Conclusions
Fig. 2 summarises our discussion of the senses of todavía.
Throughout this paper we have argued that there is a semantic characterisation of Spanish todavía in procedural terms
that is both simple and wide encompassing. Our proposal offers strong reasons to conclude that this form covers a single
lexical item -- not two -- whose variety of senses can be systematically derived from a basic rigid encoded instruction: to
find a context where continuity from the past and potential transition of the predicate -- either past or feature -- are manifest.
Various contextual degrees of relevance of this potential transition may give rise to conversational implicatures of different
strengths. We view this content as procedural rather than conceptual. From this, accurate predictions about the
distribution of todavía follow. The procedural nature of the semantic content of todavía also allows for an account of how a
variety of effects concerning aspect arise from its use. They often result from meaning coercion that derives from the
rigidity of the procedurally encoded semantic features of todavía. The first prediction is that when a clash of semantic
features occurs, the resulting interpretation will invariably preserve the procedural features. This is indeed what we see in
the attested fact that it is difficult to combine todavía with durative verbal predicates that are not prone to change, that is,
those that encode a conceptual [TRANSITION]feature. Because of the procedural nature of the feature [+TRANSITION]
encoded in todavía,there is a rigid instruction to find a context where a potential for transition is manifest. When this is
possible, the conceptual [TRANSITION]feature of the verb is adjusted and the utterance is interpretable and acceptable.
When such a context is completely implausible and hence cognitively not highly available, the utterance is odd.
Treating the meaning of todavía as procedural in the terms we have discussed also explains variations in the resulting
overall sentence aspect. Because todavía procedurally encodes [+TRANSITION],its combination with conceptual [+DURATIVE]
[(Fig._2)TD$IG]
14
É. Erdely, C. Curcó / Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
Fig. 2. Basic meaning and uses of todavía.
É. Erdely, C. Curcó / Journal of Pragmatics 91 (2016) 1--15
15
in negative utterances produces a feature clash that is resolved so as to preserve the procedural [+TRANSITION].This is
indeed the outcome with verbs such as sleep in negative contexts, where the event is aspectually interpreted as
inchoative rather than as durative. Once this is understood, there is no need to conclude that Spanish has a positive
polarity durative todavía and a negative polarity punctual todavía.
Seeing these characteristics as procedural rather than as meaning elements that derive from a set of conceptually
structured presuppositions additionally clarifies why some parts of the meaning of todavía are not cancellable. We have
discussed how, when this distinction is made, one of the arguments to consider the possibility of two todavía vanishes.
Non-temporal senses of todavía are accommodated by our formula too. The meaning formula we propose includes a
variable that ranges across conceptual domains. The way this variable is fixed gives out spatial, emphatic, concessive
and a variety of other scalar readings. The element of posteriority previously associated with the semantics of todavía by
some authors is seen here as the result of pragmatic interpretation and the relevance of the transition made manifest by
the use of todavía.
Finally, prospective effects are explained too as the result of the derivation of a conversational implicature that can
have different strengths. This process is also guided by the semantic presence of a [+TRANSITION]feature and the pragmatic
search for optimal relevance.
Hopefully, the approach to todavía that we present here provides a useful framework to tackle complicated issues that
remain open, such as the relation of todavía with ya and with other Spanish adverbs such as hasta, incluso and aún, and
with other markers of concession such as de todas formas, aún así, and a pesar de eso among others. It could also help
clarify the similarities and differences between this adverb and some analogous terms in other languages.
Acknowledgements
This work was possible, thanks to the support of projects PAPIIT IN411415, PAPIIT IN401411, both sponsored by
DGAPA-UNAM, and of a CONACYT grant to Érika Erdely.
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