Double modals as single lexical items in American English
Double Modals as Single Lexical Items In American English.An important problem faced by modern studies of the American English auxiliary verbs is preventing the iteration of modals as in sentence : 1. I could must do that.In general, there have been two main approaches for ruling out such sequences of modals: the Phrase-Structure (P-S) rule approach based on the Auxiliary analysis which relies on P-S rules containing only one modal per surface clause; and the subcategorization approach as a part of the Main Verb analysis , which assumes that modals are finite forms and are subcategorized for stem forms. One problem that both types of analyses face is that there are large numbers of English speakers in the USA, most notably in the South Midland and Southern United States, who regularly use double modals (D-M). 2.I don’t think I have any grants you might could apply for. 3.We might can go up there next Sunday. 4.I may could at Finger’s. 5.You know, if you drank a half a drink,you might oughta go ho-me and sleep it off. 6.This thing here I might should turn over to Ann. 7.How is it no one might not would notice that but Ann? 8.Well, once we get under way, it shouldn’t oughta take us very long. Allowing for double modals might seem to be a simple matter of relaxing the restrictions on the iteration of modals. Thus, for these dialects , the Auxiliary analysis would have an alternative P-S rule allowing two or more modals, and the Main Verb analysis would allow modals to have stem forms.However, such simple solutions are not adequate when assessed against data collected in Texas from DM speakers.This data as a whole indicates that merely relaxing the restrictions of either the P-S analysis or the subcategorization analysis will not adequately account for the speakers’ intuitions about or production of DM’s.In fact, weakening the restrictions of either of these two analyses would do little more than generate unrestricted sequences of modals. Such a consequence is problematic since the Texas data indicates that DM dialects have significant syntactic and semantic restrictions.While being regional, double modals are quite important phenome-non. A large percentage of the U.S. population uses them. Almost every native speaker of the Southern Midland and Southern dialect areas uses at least one DM at least occasionally.Also, there are two facts suggesting that the underlying structures of single and double modal dialects are very similar.First, from the viewpoint of structural dialectology, DM’s are intelligible to speakers of single modal dialects, so the structure of DM dialects must be compatible with those of single modal dialects. Second, some Northerners who migrate to Texas begin to use DM’s within a year of their arrival, showing that Northern English can easily accommodate DM’s. SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC CHARACTERISTICSBoth the unconstrained phrase-structure and subcategorization analyses predict that all combinations of DM’s are acceptable. There are the nine modals, can, could, may, might, should, will, would, ought to, must, and the quasi-modals, better (as in had better, ‘d better), need, supposed to, used to, attested in DM’s, and according to analysis, there are 156 possible combinations with them. Here are the most common:may could might would might supposed tomay can might better might’ve used tomay will might had better may need tomay should can might better canmay supposed to used to could might woulda should oughta musta coulda had oughta might could would bettermight oughta could mightmight can oughta couldmight should may used to In general, the DM combinations are strictly ordered. e.g: may can, but not can may.The exceptions to this are could might , can might. Typically,the first modal is may or might .There is generally one sense (or sometimes two related senses) that is (are) preferred for each DM while other senses are generally rejected or treated indifferently. In the case of might could
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