Chen, Rinelle: From Prism to Pipeline: Divergent Interpretive Paths of Just and Still

This paper examines two highly frequent yet relatively undercompared expressions in everyday English: just and still. Existing research has often analyzed just as a focus marker, minimizer, hedge, or scalar restriction marker, while still has commonly been examined in relation to temporal persistence, continuation, or concessive marking. These approaches offer important insights into their semantic and pragmatic functions, but they have paid comparatively less attention to how the two expression