English verbs selecting Bare forms

[Mike Maxwell]

Carl Pollard (whose name my keyboard wants to spell "Calr") wrote:

>You're right that many verbs are implicated,
>but not all of them are imperative, e.g.
>
>  I'll try and get a reply off to them pronto.

That's what I get for trying to send off an email during class break...

I seem to recall a U of Washington dissertation in the mid-80s on this.  In
fact, I think there have been lots of writeups on this.  So I probably
shouldn't say any more, although I suspect it has intriguing things to say
about what is or isn't a VP.  But--in your original msg, Carl, you wrote:

>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?

It's true you (OK, I) can't get
    *I'll try and getting a reply off
or even:
    *I'm trying and getting a reply off.
But aren't the ff. more or less OK:
    It's no use trying and getting a reply off; the email is broken.
    He's forever trying and giving his teacher an apple.
And the ff. seem to be just fine:
    He's going and getting a bigger hammer.
    My friend is coming and fixing my bathtub.
Why this difference between "try and" on the one hand, and "go and" or "come
and" on the other?

                                         Mike Maxwell
                                         Summer Institute of Linguistics
                                         Mike_Maxwell at sil.org