Re: USAGE: double modals (was Re: negativity)

From:    Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...>
> From: caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...>
> > I live in the Blue Ridge Mtns. of western VA.  "Might could" is very
> > common in this area.  I've been here 14 years.  It's beginning to
> > sound "correct"!
>
> It's so common around central NC that not only is it starting to sound
> correct to me, I'm actually catching myself producing it quite often.
> Coupled with the fact that my accent is starting to drift[*], this is
> a worrying development.
>
> [*] I have been told on various occasions by Americans that I sound
> Scottish, and on others that I sound Australian. I think this is the
> drift towards /a/ from /A/, and a few other things.
Which is an odd assessment, since (basilectal) Scottish English doesn't
sound a whole lot like Australian to me.

BTW, why is the word "basilectal"? "Bathylectal" would be a better
purely Greek term :)

---------------------------------------------
From:    "David J. Peterson" <dedalvs@...>

> Tom Weir wrote:
N.B. It's <Wier>. :)

(<Weir> is the more common variant, but it has not been spelled that way
in my family for over 500 years.)

> > Where's your wife from? Double modals such as this are actually
> > pretty rare in Texas, compared to the rest of the South, since much
> > of Texas was settled by people from the lower Midwest.  I myself
> > don't use it, and don't recall ever hearing another Texan use it,
> > but the more I think about it, the more it makes practical sense to
> > me:  three syllables less than "I might be able to have".
>
> A colleague of mine down here (a Texan) is writing her first major
> paper on double modals.  She says it's rather common, as do the
> two other Texans in our department.
Depends on what you mean by common.  It's certainly nothing like
you find in East Coast Southern dialects.  There's also an isogloss
bundle that separates East Texas (including much of the Gulf Coast)
from the rest of the state; here you might be right that it's common.
If you check up the dialect literature, though, you'll find that
double modals are relatively restricted to this part of the State that
was settled primarily by people from the Deep South, and outside is
used often by people with connections to that part. (You'll note
that Geoff's wife's family comes from Tyler, which is situated inside
that isogloss.)

>  I recently checked a form with
> her that I heard on TV: "You might should oughtta have..."  It was
> on a cartoon--the Justice League Unlimited, of all things.  It was
> supposed to be taking place in the future.  I wonder if the writers
> were conscious of this, and were trying to suggest that double
> modals will become common in the future...
It's possible. I've certainly noticed native Chicagoans, and
even New Yorkers, using other Southernisms like <y'all>.  But <y'all>
is in an unusually favored position, since it slips right into a gap
in the paradigm, and those who use it tend to use it all the time.

Note this article about the spread of Texan dialect, particularly
<y'all>:
<http://www.freep.com/news/nw/texan14e_20050114.htm>

The article is typically wrong about the use of <y'all>; it can
be used in the presence of one person, but only when that person
notionally represents a group of people, such as a waiter in a
restaurant.  Thus, one cannot say, as this article claims, "Y'all
are my wife", since one presumably can have *only* one wife. (In
Texas, anyways.) Note also what it says about double modals:

  "It's very easy for people who move into Texas to pick up 'y'all,'
  " Bailey said. "It's a little bit harder to pick up 'fixin' to.'
  But 'might could' is another matter. We have found that unless
  you're born and raised in Texas, you don't pick up the double modals."

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637