"Shouldn't ought"--and "might oughta"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Aug 2, 2005, at 8:37 AM, Larry Horn wrote:

>>> [Chris Waigl]
>>>
>> I'm currently looking at bits of speech, and found "would might" in a
>> recorded lecture by Paul Krugman on social security a minute ago:
>>
>> ----
>> And you would might wanna ask you know do- do we have an - are we in
>> general raising enough money as a government to pay for hurricane
>> relief
>> ----
>>
> I'd suspect a performance error here, rather than a dialect trait.
> I'd wager this would (might) be edited out of a written version, or
> even a repeated oral one.

my suspicion too.  probably a reformulation; krugman started with
"would" and then switched to the more hedged "might".  a few words
later there's a restart ("do - do we...") and a reformulation ("do we
have an - are we...").  all of this is perfectly ordinary in speech.

arnold