Grammaticalizing Adverbs of English: The Case of still

Abstract

The development in English of sentence adverbs, connectives and discourse markers out of VP adverbs has been the subject of a number of recent studies, many of which liken such changes to grammaticalization, involving parallel syntactic and semantic shifts or reanalyses. This paper examines the recent evolution of the English lexeme still, which has given rise to counterexpectational, concessive-connective and discourse-marking uses in addition to the older spatial and temporal ones. Shifts in position, scope and sense are traced to examine how they become correlated over time; the shifts are found to align only over long time periods. No evidence is found for any qualitative differences among the different periods in the evolution of uses of the adverb, from temporal to discoursal. The findings suggest that these shifts are gradual and context-led.