English verbs selecting Bare forms

[Martin Jansche]

On Thu, 5 Apr 2001, Lara Taylor wrote:

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

Try search on Google for some of these phrases.  You'll be surprised.

> >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?

Your response illustrates a good point: nobody has the opportunity or
the time to observe everything.  So claims that certain things are
impossible should only be made after careful research.  In most cases
you'd probably want to start with a corpus search, and once you have a
better idea what you're looking for design a questionnaire to give to
research subjects (not other linguists).

A quick and simple search on the Switchboard transcripts turns up
three examples of "try + V[bse]" (look for "try VB") already, and in
light of that I'm convinced that a carful study would reveal that this
construction is used regularly and systematically by speakers of AmE,
BrE, and possibly other dialects.

- martin