Help with toujours, encore, déjà and jamais

Hi --

I understand the regular sense of these adverbs well enough, but there are so many exceptions to the regular sense, exceptions that don't make sense in English.  Also, when the concepts of time continuing or interrupted or never occurring or never occurring again get even more confusing when in the negative in French.

Do you have any lessons that help practice these concepts?

Thanks
Dale

I'm not sure if you've already gone through the negations on Unit 12.7, but if so, Chapter 3 in the green Grammaire Progressive du Français (niveau avancé) might help you; it's called Les Négations Particulières. It shows what the negative structure is "opposing" to help you understand the gist of what is being negated.

Example:
«Pas encore» est la négation de «déjà»  et exprime que le sujet a l'intention de faire l'action. «Déjà» peut avoir pour négation «jamais».

If you're past that level, I'm working through the brown Grammaire Progressive du Français (niveau perfectionnement) right now and Chapter 52 has a pretty good summary table on negations according to intent.

Examples (relative to toujours, encore, déjà and jamais):
déjà => ne...jamais, ne...pas encore (=intention), ne...toujours pas (=attente)
toujours (=encore) =>ne...plus (=c'est fini)
toujours =>ne...jamais

I don't recommend jumping straight to the exercises in the brown book though without having at least gone through the blue Grammaire Progressive du Français (niveau intermediare). It's geared more towards precisions in usage than learning and mastering grammar. But if you would like to use it as a reference guide, it's a good workbook to work on grammatical point details.