yet/still vs not-yet/not-still vs still-not/yet-not.

[pseudomonas]

Still (ha!) being confused by that thing where yet and still are roughly synonyms (massive difference in register notwithstanding) and "not yet" and "not still" are verging on antonyms. ("not begun" vs "already ended"). 

I always have a lot of trouble thinking through yet/still esp when trying to translate stuff. 

I *think* it *might* be  

still X = yet X → "X began at some point in the past and continued to happen until [now]"  (where [now] is either deictic or anaphoric "on wednesday it was still raining")

and then:

not still X → "!(still X)"  [*]    "she is not still learning the guitar"
not yet X → "still !(X)"  [**]   "she is not yet learning the guitar"
still not X → "still !(X)"          "she is still not learning the guitar"
yet not X → "still !(X)"  [***]  "she is yet not learning the guitar"

but my head hurts a bit now. Obv I'm not including non-temporal uses such as "yet" meaning "nevertheless".

I think this is probably same thing as that weird English quirk where "must not" ≈ "may not" but "must" != "may"; the "not" scopes oddly with "must (not X)" vs "(may not) X". But there it's kinda easy to bracket them as above. The "verb not" → !(verb) thing is archaic, but I see how it got there.

But with not-yet the "not" feels like it scopes to an argument it's not adjacent to. I know, idioms gonna idiom non-compositionally, but still. (ha again)

[*]  with implication that X definitely has happened in the past but has now stopped, even if a very literal pedant could pretend that it could include the situation where X has never happened (and hence is continuing not to happen.)

[**] nuance difference ofc; "not yet X" implies very heavily that X is expected to happen at some point; "still not X" doesn't imply it nearly as strongly. But the directionality in time is the same — hasn't happened in the past, might happen in the future.

[***] and sounds dated verging on archaic. "yet not" I think is basically reserved for non-temporal uses ("it was damp yet not raining").

Comments

[vyvyanx]

And then there's the option to put "yet" at the end, in a way which would sound rather odd with still ("she is not learning the guitar yet" is fine; "she is not learning the guitar, still" less so). I feel there's also more judgement implied with "still" than "yet" in many cases - "he still hasn't tidied his room" suggests he really ought to have done it vs. "he hasn't yet tidied his room" where it seems like it's just something that's on a list of things he'll probably get around to shortly.

[pseudomonas]

True! I wonder if this is a particular case of footnote 2, where "not yet" implies that the thing is definitely going to happen, whereas "still not" is quite a bit weaker (though I feel there's still some expectation implied otherwise you'd just say "not" rather than specify any time range)

[simont]

I don't think I even know what the third one means. In the sense of there being more than one option.

The first two are fine. "She is not still learning the guitar" means she gave up; "she is not yet learning the guitar" means she hasn't started in the first place (but plans to).

But "she is still not learning the guitar" could mean that her parents have been on at her to start for ages and she doesn't wanna, or that she's been dutifully going to the lessons but for some reason isn't showing improvement.

"not yet X" implies very heavily that X is expected to happen at some point; "still not X" doesn't imply it nearly as strongly

I think to my ear, "still not" suggests more strongly that you've been waiting for ages and are getting impatient. "She is not yet learning the guitar" is a thing you might say casually, like because she mail-ordered a beginner's guitar yesterday and it'll take a few days to turn up. But "still not" suggests that she's had plenty of time to get round to it and (for some reason) you're really exasperated that she still hasn't.

[simont]

… I suppose that that does mean a less strong expectation of it happening in future, but it depends on the sense of "expect".

There's the normative "expect" that says you'll be cross if it doesn't happen, and the predictive "expect" that says you'll be surprised if it doesn't happen. I think one could argue that "she is still not learning the guitar" is expressing the fact that these are beginning to diverge: you think that for some reason she should learn the guitar, but you're beginning to lose hope that she will in fact get round to it.

(This particular example really makes me wonder just who is so keen for her to learn the guitar. Especially before she's even started – it would be understandable if she had clear talent that she was wasting, but how would you even know that yet at this point?)

[pseudomonas]

Yes, I meant the predictive expect. "not yet" implies that you think it will happen; "still not" doesn't as reliably have that implication, whatever your preferences are.

But I take the point; my main motivation in writing this was the "not still" vs "not yet" disagreement.