Still as an additive particle in conditionals

Abstract

This paper studies a hitherto unexplored reading of still as an additive particle, attested when it appears in the consequent of a conditional. A standard existing approach to the meaning of still is couched in terms of events. However, I show that prominent event-based analyses (such as Ippolito 2007) are incompatible with modal environments, raising the general issue of the cross-world identity of events (cf. Hacquard 2009). This issue can be avoided by being explicit about the ontological status of events. On the basis of this I build a revised version of Ippolito's (2007) event-based account of aspectual still. I argue that the additive reading of still is the result of an additive focus particle taking wide scope over the conditional. This reading is also attested in the well-studied case of semifactual conditionals, and hence this analysis contributes to the open question about the role of still in semifactual conditionals.