"increasing" use of variable TRY AND

[JP Villanueva]

I apologize if I'm rehashing, but is everyone sure that these two forms
are necessarily competing?  Both forms can take a bare infinitive:

"Try to be nice." and "Try and be nice."

But the _try_and_ construction is less productive:

"I'm trying to sleep." vs. *****"I'm trying and sleep."

So, to me it seems, _try to_ is construction that acts as a fully
productive verb, whereas _try and_ is a chunk used for only for
non-negative imperatives.  Check out the negative:

"Try to stop me!"     "Try and stop me!"
"Don't try to stop me."      *****"Don't try and stop me!"

Now, I'm sure other speakers will have different intuitions, but my point
is this:  if they're not equally productive in the rest of the paradigm,
they're probably NOT competing forms.  _Try_and_ can never userp _try_to_.

Parting shots before I go back to bed:  I grew up in the Pacific Northwest
before all the "californians" moved in and tried to change my dialect, so
either, neither /i/
often /afen/
hoof, roof, foot, root /U/

My undergrads tried to heckle me and my "hick" pronunciation once, but I
told them that I was tired of assimilating already and that I would never
be White-like-them.  They backed off (winkity wink).

                        -johnpatrickVillanueva-
                        -----------------------
                          jvillanu at ctc.ctc.edu


On Thu, 20 Jul 2000, Victoria Neufeldt wrote:

> I just tried to check on the relative frequency of "try and" and "try to" in
> our citation database, but the thing froze up on me.  However, just to
> reiterate the basic usage issue, here is an excerpt from  Merriam-Webster's
> Dict of English Usage:
>
> "The use of _try and_ in contexts where _try to_ would be possible has been
> subject to criticism since the 19th century.  The issue continues to enjoy
> great popularity, although a number of usage commentators, including Fowler
> 1926, Evans 1957, and Follett 1966, are on record as recognizing that _try
> and_ is an established standard idiom. . . .
>
> "The basis for objecting to _try and_ is usually the notion that _try_ is to
> be followed by the infinitive combined with the assumption that an
> infinitive requires _to_.  This is the same mistaken assumption that has
> caused so much trouble over the so-called split infinitive  . . .
>
> ". . . _Try_ did not appear as _try and_ until the 17th century, when our
> familiar sense of the word was first established.  Interestingly, the
> earliest example for the "make an attempt" sense in the OED involves the
> _try and_ construction, so _try and_ may actually be older than _try to_."
>
> There's more interesting stuff in the _try and_ article.  Included, by the
> way, is a quotation from a letter by Jane Austen written in 1813: "Now I
> will try and write of something else."
>
> Victoria
>
> Victoria Neufeldt
> Merriam-Webster, Inc. P.O. Box 281
> Springfield, MA 01102
> Tel: 413-734-3134  ext 124
> Fax: 413-827-7262
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
> > Of RonButters at AOL.COM
> > Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2000 11:24 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: "increasing" use of variable TRY AND
> >
> >
> > My memory is that TRY AND is also in Poutsma and Jespersen, as I
> > recall. So,
> > yes, TRY AND as an alternative for TRY TO has been around for a long time.
> > 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?
> >
> >
> > In a message dated 7/18/2000 10:20:54 PM, nee1 at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU writes:
> >
> > << It's not. I don't remember the details, but I'm fairly sure
> > Visser looks at
> > this construction. Of course, I don't HAVE Visser. >>
> >
>