The Multiple Modality System in Southern Scotland: Levels of Acceptability of Double and Triple Modals in the 21st century Scottish Borders region

Anthony R Bour

doi:10.23963/cnp.2018.3.2.1

Abstract

This paper mainly aims to describe and analyse the current syntactic and semantic system of Multiple Modality spoken and written in the Scottish Borders region. The task of the questionnaire survey is to get further details as regards this dialectal reality in which hundreds of combinations are possible. In total, 231 informants participated in this field dialectal enquiry from 2010 to 2013. The data analysed in this paper stem from the 2011 survey that mainly took place in Kelso and Jedburgh. 73 informants completed the structured-type questionnaire at this time. How many combinatorial possibilities are allowed in this part of Scotland? What are the possible positions of modal expressions in these combinations? What types of semantic interpretations can these combinations generate in the Borders? What is (un)grammatically possible in the varieties of Scottish English spoken in the region? In contrast to the American South, where a number of projects (both theoretical and field studies-based) have been undertaken since the 1970s, there are, at this point only very few answers to these questions regarding the Scottish Borders region. It is time to reactivate the knowledge in this research field in order to obtain a general syntactic overview of these modal sequences which were born in Northern Europe.

Highlights

Research on this dialectal phenomenon has been conducted since the 1970s. It is quite complex because it contains hundreds of possible modal combinations, i.e. Double Modals (DMs, i.e. two adjacent modals) and Triple Modals (TMs, i.e. three adjacent modals), used in various territories of the Western-part of the Anglophone world. Authors such as Nagle (1994, 202) think that they are of recent use, based on the earliest attestations of Multiple Modals (MMs) found in two Scottish texts written by Calderwood (1756) and Alexander Ross (1768): (a) If we get a German doctor, not one of us will can speak to him. (1756) ER
As mentioned in the first table, the favourite combination is might not can, which is identified as a classical DM. 18 women and only 5 men ticked this structure for the first sentence
Should ought to belongs to one of the favourite combinations of the informants in Kelso and Jedburgh. These first four sequences, i.e. the two classical ones with Central Modals could and can and the two hybrid ones with Marginal Modal ought to are quite common to both genders

Summary

Introduction

Research on this dialectal phenomenon has been conducted since the 1970s It is quite complex because it contains hundreds of possible modal combinations, i.e. Double Modals (DMs, i.e. two adjacent modals) and Triple Modals (TMs, i.e. three adjacent modals), used in various territories of the Western-part of the Anglophone world. Epistemic-Root is the most common semantic ordering (Battistella 1995, 31) for modal combinations. Their diversity generates other orderings such as: R-R (used to could) 1 You used to could do that in the old house (Butters 1996, 274)

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Results

Conclusion