-1

Following up my previous questions on the usage of the word / phrase ('banzai' and 'ring the cherries') in Thomas Harris' thriller, ”The Silence of Lambs,” I came across the following passage in the scene Stacy Hubca, an office clerk of Franklin Insurance Agency in Belvedere, Ohio answers to Clarice Starling, an FBI agent.

“She died. She went to Florida to retire and she died down there, Fredrica said. I never did know her. - - - You might could talk to her family or something. I’ll write it down for you." - ibid Chapter 54. Page 332.

As an only school textbook-based English language learner, it’s my understanding that an auxiliary verb (might) should be followed by a root of verb. What is the grammatical justification of the sentence, “You might could talk to her family or something”?

Though it "might could" be a midwest dialect, but what’s wrong with simply and normally stating “You might talk to her family” or “You could talk to her family”?

Yoichi Oishi
  • 70,211
  • 2
    It is grammatically incorrect but colloquially justifiable. – Renae Lider Sep 28 '14 at 09:09
  • @user3058846 I have never heard anyone say 'You might could talk to her family', colloquially or otherwise. – WS2 Sep 28 '14 at 09:18
  • 1
    @WS2 you probably haven't spent much time in hillbilly country. – phoog Sep 28 '14 at 09:47
  • 2
    Why not "you might" or "you could"? In dialect, you "you might could" does not mean the same thing. It means "you might be able to". – Peter Shor Sep 28 '14 at 11:43
  • @Peter: I didn't know about this "apparently redundant" dialectal usage until I came to ELU (where it crops up repeatedly). But until reading your comment there I never realised that it's not redundant. In my English, I'd have to say something like "It's possible you could do that" to more explicitly disambiguate the "neutral statement of possibility" from the admonitory "You might / could / should* do it"*. – FumbleFingers Sep 28 '14 at 13:07

1 Answers1

-1

No - it is not grammatically correct.

Either

You might talk to her family

or

You could talk to her family

could be correct depending on context. I would assume it is a mistake in the textbook, or perhaps should have had the two words separated with a slash to show either/or.

Rory Alsop
  • 6,672
  • 4
    It's an example from a novel, not a textbook. The intended meaning might be “You might be able to talk to her family”, with could used as an infinitive presumably by someone who speaks a fairly unusual dialect. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 28 '14 at 09:34
  • 4
    Blanket statements like that are rarely justifiable. I've definitely heard people from the US South say things like “You shoulda coulda done it”, meaning “You should have been able to do it”. Dialects and idiolects do not always follow standardised patterns, and when representing dialect speech in writing, nonstandard features are usually retained. I mentioned the novel vs. textbook issue because “might/could” is obviously not a possibility in direct speech. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 28 '14 at 09:39
  • 1
    In fact, there is a Wiktionary page for might could which translates it as “would perhaps be able to” (as I suggested above), treats it as a stacked modal, and places it in Southwestern US English, which fits my instinctive ‘feel’ of the phrase. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 28 '14 at 09:47
  • Janus - the question is 'is it grammatically correct.' And the answer is a definite no. I suppose you are correct that it can be colloquially appropriate, so I'll take back my statement that it must be a mistake. – Rory Alsop Sep 28 '14 at 09:51
  • 2
    @JanusBahsJacquet actually, it's "southern US", not southwestern. The page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_American_English includes a map that shows the region stretching from Texas in the west and south to Virginia and West Virginia in the north and east. Clarice Starling apparently grew up in West Virginia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Starling – phoog Sep 28 '14 at 09:52
  • 4
    Rory: Just because something is colloquial or dialectal doesn't make it ungrammatical. It's still grammatical in that dialect. It's just not a feature that is grammatical throughout the Anglosphere, or indeed one that's grammatical in ‘Standard English’. @phoog Sorry, you're right. Not sure where I got -western from. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 28 '14 at 10:06
  • In my version of English we say "You might be able to talk ..." A cursory search of Google book shows that most instances of 'might could' in literature come from academic books that describe the phenomenon. According to "African-American English: Structure, History, and Use By Salikoko S. Mufwene" the expression originated in that culture. – chasly - supports Monica Jul 11 '15 at 10:15