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 CHARACTERISTICS

Both 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 to

may can                     might better                 might’ve used to

may will                     might had better          may need to

may should                can might                     better can

may supposed to        used to could               might woulda

should oughta            musta coulda               had oughta

might could                would better

might oughta              could might

might can                   oughta could

might 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  -  “ability”. The “possibility” is ranked low, and the “permission” sense is somewhere in between.

Thus, Double Modals could be semantically described as follows:

                                Might could

“ability”: Noone could tell if he was dealing with them or not, but Bill

              might  could  tell the case of his arrival.

“permission’: She is a very polite three-year-old.Yesterday she asked

                      If she might could write on the walls.

“possibility”: There might could be water in that old well.

                                 Might should

“obligation”: They are just realized that they forgot to send an invitation

                       to  John. ............