English verbs selecting Bare forms

[Lara Taylor]

In response to this:

> Yes, I've heard requests of the form "Try talk some sense into them."
> quite a lot, and also (perhaps less frequently) "I'll try do a
> version" (BNC).

Martin, I think that "try talk some sense into them" sounds putrid, at
least to my east-coast/midwestern american english ears...

"try talking some sense into them" is the phrase.

or, as Carl points out, "try and talk some sense into them"

> > Funny, isn't it, that uninflected TRY will take an AND+VP[base]
> > complement, no matter whether it is base, imperative, or present
> > non-3rdsng, but not the inflected forms TRIES, TRIED, TRYING?

the fact that it can only be "try and" but not tries/tried/trying probably
indicates this is a construction.

>the same seems to hold without "and" present.

not in american english.  and i really wonder if it does in british
english despite your examples from the BNC.  anyone native speakers of
those dialects have an opinion?

best,
lara

------------
Lara M. Taylor
http://www.ling.ucsd.edu/~ltaylor