Problems for a uniform analysis of ancora in Italian

The Italian additive particle ancora has uses that can be paraphrased by again and still in English. Michela Ippolito’s uniform analysis of still and again in English could be the foundation for a uniform analysis of the two uses of ancora, but we argue that it faces serious challenges. Her core idea is that still and again have the same presupposition about a past eventuality and differ only in the assertion such that still asserts that the same eventuality is still happening at the reference time while again asserts that another eventuality is. The idea has appealing features, but this analysis of again fails to entail the ‘discontinuity inference’ that the past eventuality came to an end before the reference time, and furthermore, this analysis of still is not general enough to account for examples where the presupposition and assertion are about different eventualities. Through the critical discussion, we will elucidate the specific issues that need to be solved in order to achieve a uniform analysis of the different uses of ancora.