Double modal

[Benjamin Barrett]

I recall not being able to parse Gandhi's "must needs" (or was it "must
need") in high school. Other people around me accepted it fine, though.
That was in Seattle in the early 1980s. Now it seems odd, though
understandable. BB

Dennis R. Preston wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Double modal
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Scot,
>
> Perhaps not questioning, but "talking to" still suggests a
> metalinguistic operation that might not be in play if people "just"
> heard the construction (although one may never "just hear" the speech
> of the linguistically different, as the famous Japanese Takesi Sibata
> pointed ouit years ago). The transparency of "might be able to" =
> "might could" seems obvious to me, but that may be from the point of
> view of a native "might could" speaker.
>
> dInIs
>
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Scot LaFaive <spiderrmonkey at HOTMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Double modal
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Sorry, I was just joking. There is nothing wrong with the double modal
>> construction. It's just not used around here and I would say most
>> Wisconsinites don't have it as part of their grammar (that's what I mean
>> when I say "ungrammatical" for us). It's perfectly grammatical for others,
>> such as yourself, since it is part of your grammar. I still say that most
>> people around here get confused by double modals because they don't exist in
>> their grammars and they are very foreign. Everyone I've talked to (not just
>> questioned) around here seems to consider double modals semantically
>> unintelligible, or at least confusing. It's just odd for us to use two
>> modals like "might" and "could" together in a clause.
>>

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