Temporal noch/still and further-to readings of German noch

Abstract

In this paper I propose an analysis of temporal still and its German counterpart noch. The proposal unifies earlier analyses e.g. of 'it is still raining', 'it is still 8am'. It is then applied to so-called further-to noch in German as in 'Ich gehe noch einkaufen' (lit.: 'I still go shopping' = 'I will just quickly go shopping'). The proposal highlights the interesting interaction of syntactic structure, presupposition, implicature and focus in such sentences.