Adverb placement: "There is still" vs. "there still is"

Question

I believe the following sentences are grammatically correct and that perhaps the latter has an emphasizing effect on still in certain contexts.

• There is still some time left.
• There still is some time left.

I thought the adverb placement rule that adverbs must come after the be-verb (source) is not absolute but rather like a guideline. My friend claims that in spoken English, the second example is fine, but in written English, it is technically ungrammatical.

My questions are:

1. Are both sentences grammatically correct?
2. Am I right to think that there are many cases of adverb usage that do not follow the typical adverb placement rules such as the one mentioned above?

Thank you for your input.

Answer 1

There are many different kinds of adverbs, and each one has different rules for placement.
This is one reason why knowing that some word "is an adverb" is pretty useless information,
because it doesn't tell you anything about how, when, or why to use it.

Still is a complex temporal quantifier, and refers to temporal continuity from past to present.
Like most quantifiers, it can appear either directly before the constituent it binds (in this case
the constituent some time left), or before any constituent that contains that (in this case the
verb phrase be some time left).

So they're both fine. In this case.
In both speech and writing (anything that works in speech is OK in writing).
Other kinds of adverbs have other rules governing their placement.

Answer 2

Examples from reputed journals 1. "Despite significant recent advances in our understanding of complex systems, the field is still in flux, and there is still is a lack of consensus as to where the centre is" JOURNAL NATURE|VOL 427 | 29 JANUARY 2004 |www.nature.com/nature (Impact factor, 40.1)

2. "..there is still is ample room for general engagement to signal market needs upstream.." JOURNAL Technovation (Elsevier)

3. "However, many years later there is still is no widely available vaccine recommended for use in humans" Therapeutic Advances in Infectious Disease (SAGE)

Examples from other reputed/reliable sources:

While this data surely helps countries hours away from an approaching tsunami, there is still is very little that satellites and around-the-clock command centers can do for hundreds of thousands of people living in vulnerable coastal communities.

There is still is so much room for growth, development and change.

OTHER EXAMPLES:

1. Although the need for a gorilla sanctuary isn’t incredibly great, there is still is a need.
2. There is still is a noticeable odour surrounding the skeleton.
3. while there is still is a great need for activism unhindered by the political constraints of government funding (such as the cross-issue anti-poverty work Freedom Center did), the regional advances in peer-run services are huge. ....& Many more...