Sintagma (Dec 2016)
Valores semántico-pragmáticos de aún
Abstract
Spanish dictionaries and grammar textbooks usually describe the word aún (even) as an expression of time and aun as an expression of modality (concession). In the first case, it is interchangeable with todavía (yet) and it carries an accent mark. In the second case, the word carries no accent and it is interchangeable with hasta, incluso or siquiera (until, even, (not) even). Because of its wide variety of functions and semantic values, as pointed out much earlier by Bello (§1217), some grammarians (Pavon Lucero (1999) have included aún in the group of the so called ``particles'', a group formed by some prepositions, adverbs and conjunctions. Other authors (Sanchez Lopez 1999, Leonetti 2007 y NGRALE 2009) have placed it within the subgroup of focus words, i.e. words that show the sentence information structure. This paper points out that there is no sharp contrast between these two values -- aún/aun expressing time or concession-- and that they actually share a sense of quantification related to the word's incremental character. This shared value is clearly seen in sentences with a comparative structure, in which cases this word can be equally replaced by todavía or incluso.
