Double Modal Construction in Southern American English

The Double Modal Construction (DMC) in English has traditionally been regarded as a peripheral phenomenon, characteristic of certain dialects in Old, Middle, and Modem English, and thus considered to fall outside the scope of Core Grammar. To analyze the structure of declarative DMC sentences, various theories have been proposed by examining their behavior in interrogatives, negatives, and tag questions. Building on Battistella’s (1995) framework, the present study argues that M, in DMCs possesses adverbial properties in syntactic terms. Furthermore, by situating the MP between NegP and VP, as opposed to above TP, the analysis demonstrates that M₁ does not obstruct the movement of M₂ to the clause-initial position in interrogative constructions. In negative constructions, it is also shown that the negator not associated with M₁ functions as phrasal negation targeting an adverbial phrase, while the not or n’t associated with M₂ belongs to NegP and represents sentential negation. Ultimately, this study concludes that DMCs are best understood not as part of Peripheral Grammar, but as a legitimate structure within the Core Grammar. (Chungnam National University)