Abstract

According to Löbner (1989), Germanschon ‘already’ andnoch ‘still’ are related vianoch nicht ‘not yet’ as follows: ‘Noch p att’ presupposes ‘p beforet.’Noch nicht p is equivalent tonoch (~p). Therefore ‘noch nicht p att’ presupposes ‘~p beforet.’Schon p is the negation ofnoch nicht p. Therefore ‘schon p att’ also presupposes ‘~p beforet.’ This paper gives evidence to show thatnoch nicht p andschon p do not have the postulated presuppositions, and argues thatnoch nicht is not compositional. Like Löbner (1989), the present paper claims that its conclusions apply crosslinguistically