We might should oughta take a second look at this: A syntactic re-analysis of double modals in Southern United States English

Previous analyses of the double modal construction in Southern United States English (SUSE) have been unable to fully explain all of the observed data regarding negation, questions, and stranded quantifiers. In this article, I argue for a structure placing the first modal in an MP merged above TP and the second modal in T. This structure has the benefits of maintaining the distinction seen between the two modals and explaining the separation of the modals by negation and stranded quantifiers while being able to explain the raising of the second modal in main clause questions. To support the proposed merged MP structure, I argue that the first modal of a double modal pair is immune to sequence of tense effects, and I take this as evidence that first position modals lack syntactic Tense. This is further supported with crosslinguistic evidence for epistemic modality located above Tense. This article thus explains SUSE double modals as an instance of parametric variation regarding the availability of epistemic modality to be located above Tense. I also address issues associated with the proposed structure involving the Head Movement Constraint and the proposed EPP feature on M.