• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.46
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• pp.143-171
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• 2017

In this paper, we present a morphosyntactic and semantic study of the concessive conjunctive phrase [todavía que] in the Andean and River Plate areas of Latin America. Real Academia $Espa{\tilde{n}}ola$(2009) describes that the adverb todavía occurs in a variety of focus-sensitive environments and specially, in the Andean and River Plate areas, the phrase [todavía que] participates in the concessive constructions and triggers an additive interpretation. It is well known that the Quechuan suffix '-raq' and the Aymaran suffix '-raki' have the meaning of todavía which is characterized as a additive particle. Due to the absence of the paratactic relationship between the mentioned Spanish adverb and those indigenous suffixes, the adverb todavía in [todavía que] is used as a additive focalizer. We assume that these morphosyntactic and semantic properties are derived from the language contact of Quechua-Spanish and Aymara Spanish. Based on this assumption, we will further assume that the etymological peculiarity of todavía as a universal quantifier is closely related to the reading of [todavía que] as a Scalar Additive Concessive Conjunctive Phrase.