LL-L "Grammar!" 2012.11.09 (01) [EN]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L - 09 November 2012 - Volume 01
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From: Mike Morgan mwmbombay at gmail.com <marless at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2012.11.02 (01) [EN]

Mark,

Yeah, Tennessee is definitely the south... and Texas (or some parts of
it) too. And for me having a mom from the Virginia foothills of the
Appalachians was enough i guess to implant the construction in me...
re-enforced by a couple weeks each summer visiting family, and then by
living in the South for a couple tweenage years. (My father is from
only maybe 100 miles north in the coal mines of W Virginia, but double
modals are NOT a part of his speech... although his mom's family was
from eastern Kentucky.)

I am not sure though that I quite agree with the nuance ... although
definitely the combos have more nuance (and impact) than either in
isolation. Maybe if I thought enough I might could (= might possibly)
come up with a context and then an example where "might could" is
"more likely", but the first context that comes to mind (and my gut
feeling is it is the one I'd be inclined to use it the most in) is a
bit CONCESSIONARY. You come to ask me a favour, and I say "Yeah, I
might could do that for you".

And, Sandy,

you say the construction is more Southern in Scotland as well; not
sure if there is a predominance of southerners or northerners in the
Scottish immigration to the colonies of North Carolina and Virginia
throughout the 18th century, but that is where the clans in the
Scottish part of my ancestry hail from.

common double modals in my speech include
* might could
* might should
* might oughta (<ought to)

maybe less commonly:
* might would

and much less common:
* ought should

constructions with modals in the first slot and "have to" in the
second (might have to, would have to) definitely do NOT feel like
double modals... and are pretty common throughout the States, not
limited to the South.

...all based on intuition not on any actual corpus of my speech ;-)


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