"increasing" use of variable TRY AND

[Frank Abate]

In a message dated 7/19/2000 11:24:49 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
RonButters at AOL.COM writes:

> What interested me was the assertion of <Dfcoye at AOL.COM> that the use of TRY
>  AND is "increasing". How does one know that it is "increasing"? For that
>  matter, how do we know that one or another pronunciation of EITHER is
>  "increasing" (also one of Dfcoye's assertions). Does anyone have any hard
>  empirical data for either hypothesis?
>
>  Or is this just one more example of the so-often expressed naive notion
that
>  the English language is going to the dogs--that every linguistic variant
> that
>  one disfavors is evidence of "increasing" degeneration?
>

Ron is so right.  Without evidence from a vast and balanced corpus of
English, no such assertion can fairly be made.  The American National Corpus
is working to build such a resource, but the project is just under way, and
will need time (and support) to create the sort of repository of language
evidence that would allow such assertions.

As for decrying the decline of the language, this has been happening for
centuries, and not only for English.  Cicero did the same re Latin.  It's a
tired old theme.  The language certainly changes and grows, but it is very
hard to prove that it is in decline.

Frank Abate