Реферат: Double modals as single lexical items in American English

e.g : It picked up the door .

and the nominalizing morpheme -er can attach to both elements ;

e.g : garage door picker upper

Other multiword lexical items are also sometimes treated as units by the morphology : Smith and Wessoned (shot) .

On the contrary , Verb-Adjective constructions never act as a unit as far as morphology is concerned . The adjectives can take comparative clauses and the accompanying morphology while the verbs take the appropriate verbal morphemes :

e.g : Mary hammered it flatter than ever today .

He wiped it cleaner than I thought .

He shot it deader than a doornail .

DMs , in their turn , behave similarly to most multiword lexical items : sometimes they act as units and sometimes they do not . For example , Adverb placement can follow the DM indicating that they are acting as a unit :

e.g : I might could sublegally get it for you .

or interrupt DM indicating that they can act like separate words :

e.g : I might just couldn’t see it .

If we had known , we may still could have done it .

Another syntactic rule that can treat DMs as separate words is the Non-Productive Auxiliary Inversion . Questions built according to this rule may contain a DM component where only the second modal is inverted :

e.g : Could you might find you a seat somewhere ?

However , there are cases when all three possible types of inversion second modal only , first modal only , and both modals as a unit – are present :

e.g : Might should we have invited Jim ?

In general , the type of inversion depends to a great extent on the particular DM involved . Here are most preferable variants of the DM question constructions :

for might could Could + Subject + might ? (81 %)

for might should Might should + Subject ? (55 %)

for might oughta Might + Subject + oughta ? (58 %)

the most acceptable inversion type for might would is :

Would + Subject + might ? (63,6 %)

Negative placement can also either treat DMs as a unit , producing end negation ( type 1) :

e.g : I was afraid you might couldn’t find it .

or as separate elements producing medial negation ( type 2 ) :

e.g : The mother might should not put a blanket over her baby .

I don’t hear too well . I think maybe I better put it on or I might not could understand you .

Different DMs show differential preference for these two types of negation . The preference for might could and might oughta is medial negation . In the responses containing the negation of these two DMs , the overwhelming majority of users preferred to say might not could and might not oughta , respectively . On the other hand , people who accepted sentences containing negated might should or might would preferred end negation : might should not/n’t and might would not/n’t.