I think most of the mysteries in this piece can be explained if “try and stop me” just an abbreviation for “try to stop me and see if you can”.
foolswisdom · 13m ago
This is also in line with skrebbel's observation in this thread that the phrase indicates a focused attempt.
foldr · 10m ago
I don’t think that’s anything like the meaning of “I’ll try and go to the store tomorrow”. There’s no implication that anyone is trying to stop me.
Also, your abbreviation analysis would still leave a syntactic mystery, as that sort of ellipsis doesn’t seem to follow any general attested pattern of ellipsis in English.
OJFord · 7m ago
That example would be something like 'I'll try to go to the store tomorrow and see if I can' along the lines GP suggests. 'stop me' only came from the specific example they were using.
foldr · 5m ago
You can actually construct this using regular VP ellipsis (or possibly Right Node Raising?) in English, but it sounds weird and doesn’t convey the same meaning. So I don’t think so.
“I’ll try to and see if I can go to the store tomorrow”.
Then you have the various syntactic facts mentioned in the article , such as the possibility of wh-extraction. As expected, this isn’t possible in an ellipsis construction:
“What did you try and eat?”
* ”What did you try to and see if you can eat?”
echelon · 7m ago
I also like how several linguists attempt to call out this usage as wrong:
> deemed prescriptively incorrect (Routledge 1864:579 in D. Ross 2013a:120; Partridge 1947:338, Crews et al. 1989:656 in Brook & Tagliamonte 2016:320).
Interestingly this pattern also exists in Danish (though not for the same reasons). Correctly speaking you’d say “try to…” which is “prøv at…”, but since the infinitive “at” and “og” sort of both turned into /ə/ when quickly spoken and you get “prøv og…”.
OJFord · 8m ago
I don't understand the 'both is not possible' point, the example given just doesn't even attempt to add a second thing?
> John will both try and kill mosquitos[, and find where they're coming from].
Works fine?
zahlman · 3m ago
The point specifically is that the "and" in "try and" conceptually should be "adding a second thing" (what they mean by "coordination"), but isn't doing so in a fully regular way. Specifically, it seems like it should coordinate "try to kill mosquitos" and "[actually] kill mosquitos", but that interpretation isn't fully compatible with how the word "and" normally works.
On the other hand, there does seem to be a nuance in the meaning of "try and kill mosquitos" that makes it not just a dialectical form of "try to kill mosquitos"; there's an implication of expecting success. One might also point out that "try" can be replaced with synonyms in "try to" ("attempt to kill mosquitos"), but not "try and" (*"attempt and kill mosquitos"). So this is a very particular idiom.
CGamesPlay · 6m ago
The conjunction is "and", as in "try and kill" vs "kill and try".
Waterluvian · 51m ago
To me, “try to catch me!” feels more formal than “try and catch me!” Which feels kinda playful, but are both saying basically the same thing.
munchler · 46m ago
I think “try and” is used more by children than by adults, which is why it works well in this sort of playful, childlike phrase.
card_zero · 30m ago
Different sociolinguistic register, innit.
skrebbel · 54m ago
I'm not a native English speaker, but to me "try and" has always conveyed a sense of more deliberate trying, of getting over yourself, in the sense that the "try" means the choice to give it a real proper go. So first you try (or, in fact, decide to try) and then when you're fully committed and mentally prepared, then you do it.
With an interpretation like this, none of the syntactical stuff in this story seems useful anymore. You try, and then you do.
Does this make any sense at all or am I just a foreigner imagining things?
StevenWaterman · 26m ago
I'd describe it as:
- "try and" implies that the reason for failure is slightly more likely to be from laziness / not actually attempting it
- "try to" implies that the reason for failure is slightly more likely to be from incapability
As in:
- I'll try and kill the mosquito... that has been annoying me all day
- I'll try to kill the mosquito... but it's quite hard to hit with this gun
But nobody would notice if you used the wrong one.
throwanem · 19m ago
It makes sense, as folk etymologies often do. But the phrase acts in a more conditional manner in Southern American English at least.
If I say "I'm going to change that light bulb," I'm probably already getting up to fetch my toolbag.
If I say "I'll try and change that light bulb," I may be wondering whether I have a spare or a ladder or something else whose lack will interrupt the job, or in some other way doubtful of success: the implication is I expect I may come back and say something about the job other than that it's done.
If I say "Well, I might could try and change that light bulb," I probably don't mean in any particular hurry even to get up off the couch, and indeed may already be dozing off.
furyofantares · 27m ago
I think that's exactly right. I say "try to" in more neutral situations, or noncommittal, or pessimistic. It conveys it's not my top priority to succeed. "I'll try and get it done today" is easy to imagine with a neutral tone or a downward tone, conveying that I may not get to it and it isn't my top priority. "I'll try and get it done today" is easier to imagine with a chipper tone, it's a higher priority for me, I intend to get to it.
This makes logical sense too, doesn't it? "Try and" implies success. I'm not actually saying "I'll try to get it done and I will get it done", if that was the case I'd skip the try, but I am evoking an idea in that direction.
clocker · 31m ago
When you say “I’ll try to do something…” you are giving a heads up to the other person that you may give up on that thing at any time. There is no commitment.
weird-eye-issue · 33m ago
"You try, and then you do."
But it doesn't mean that - it just means you will try which doesn't actually imply any level of action
avemg · 50m ago
I’m a native speaker from the US and I think you’re imagining things. “Try and” and “try to” are completely the same.
arduanika · 25m ago
I'm also a native speaker from the US. Non-native speakers often have extra insight into the nuances of language, and I think skrebbel's headcanon here is really interesting.
I almost see "try and" as a form of "manifesting", of optimism, of believing that you will succeed. This would sort of comport with what he's saying.
But any difference is subtle, and most native speakers won't notice it, beyond maybe the more formal register of "try to".
sidibe · 7m ago
Usually these extra insights are interesting but incorrect. Like here I think. I don't think there's any different expectations between someone saying "try and" and "try to" except it's maybe a very loosely correlated signal of social class
Another example is I've seen people several times online trying to argue y'all can be singular and all y'all is a way to make it clearly plural. Ok it's interesting that y'all is used as singular and all y'all isn't just about inclusion, but its not true.
ale · 43m ago
The article literally shows the “bare form” example where this kind of meaning can be inferred: e.g. “I will try and finish the assignment.”
weird-eye-issue · 35m ago
Which is identical to "I will try to finish the assignment", so what's your point?
treetalker · 1h ago
Prompted by reading an instance of "try and" instead of "try to" in an HN-linked Register article[1] this morning, I thought this might be of interest to both non-native and native English speakers in our community.
Try to ascertain why I'm on Team "Try To"! (If you feel like trying and! J)
I thought from the title that this was going to be about some new exception handling mechanism in a programming language I'm not familiar with. In fact, the article was even more interesting than that, as I've often wondered about this in the past but never quite got to looking it up. Thank you!
koops · 27m ago
Randy Meisner was not trying "to" love again. Usage settled.
dcminter · 59m ago
British English speaker here (southern demographic) - I'd say "to" but "and" doesn't feel wrong so I think it's pretty prevalent.
I'm curious how common it is in Indian English.
shadowgovt · 41m ago
Hadn't heard about this project before; it's a really good idea.
English is not a language that either lends itself well to, or is historically regulated by, prescriptivism (with a few specific attempts that didn't claim universal adoption). Treating it as a language where "If you've heard this novel construct, here's where it came from and what it's related to" is a good way to approach it.
(I liken it often to C++. C++ is so broad that the ways you can glue features together are often novel and sometimes damn near emergent. It's entirely possible to be "a fluent C++ user" and never use curiously recurring template pattern, or consider case-statement fallthrough a bug not a feature, and so on).
arduanika · 19m ago
Likewise. A really cool site.
The English language has so many little quirks. You can try to document them all, and it's a fun endeavor, but you can't try and document them all.
throwanem · 23m ago
Good grief. Quote Dre up top, then totally ignore AAVE and Southern American English which both heavily feature the construction of interest, despite being interested to find out what the Boer pidgin, of all things, has to say. (Why not Basque next? That would be about as relevant!) This they call a linguistic diversity project? Surely they could not have found themselves short of sources!
_jab · 18m ago
AAVE is definitely underappreciated as the source of a lot of common modern slang. But in this case, the article makes it pretty clear that "try and" is not nearly modern enough to have come from AAVE - they show several attestations from the 1500s and even mention one from 1390.
throwanem · 16m ago
If they had headed the first section differently, I would credit this argument. Under the name "Who says this?" as at present it bears, that section is substantially incomplete.
edit: But so is your own criticism, in that it ignores AAVE is not the only dialect I mentioned. It isn't even one I would say I really speak, except inasmuch as AAVE and my own SAE heavily overlap as the close siblings they are. Both deserve to be treated, not least for that interrelationship, as well as the one you mention with their forcible deracination into mesolect and acrolect slang, where the class origin makes such terms feel "edgy."
Also, your abbreviation analysis would still leave a syntactic mystery, as that sort of ellipsis doesn’t seem to follow any general attested pattern of ellipsis in English.
“I’ll try to and see if I can go to the store tomorrow”.
Then you have the various syntactic facts mentioned in the article , such as the possibility of wh-extraction. As expected, this isn’t possible in an ellipsis construction:
“What did you try and eat?”
* ”What did you try to and see if you can eat?”
> deemed prescriptively incorrect (Routledge 1864:579 in D. Ross 2013a:120; Partridge 1947:338, Crews et al. 1989:656 in Brook & Tagliamonte 2016:320).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription
You can't really reign in language.
> John will both try and kill mosquitos[, and find where they're coming from].
Works fine?
On the other hand, there does seem to be a nuance in the meaning of "try and kill mosquitos" that makes it not just a dialectical form of "try to kill mosquitos"; there's an implication of expecting success. One might also point out that "try" can be replaced with synonyms in "try to" ("attempt to kill mosquitos"), but not "try and" (*"attempt and kill mosquitos"). So this is a very particular idiom.
With an interpretation like this, none of the syntactical stuff in this story seems useful anymore. You try, and then you do.
Does this make any sense at all or am I just a foreigner imagining things?
- "try and" implies that the reason for failure is slightly more likely to be from laziness / not actually attempting it
- "try to" implies that the reason for failure is slightly more likely to be from incapability
As in:
- I'll try and kill the mosquito... that has been annoying me all day
- I'll try to kill the mosquito... but it's quite hard to hit with this gun
But nobody would notice if you used the wrong one.
If I say "I'm going to change that light bulb," I'm probably already getting up to fetch my toolbag.
If I say "I'll try and change that light bulb," I may be wondering whether I have a spare or a ladder or something else whose lack will interrupt the job, or in some other way doubtful of success: the implication is I expect I may come back and say something about the job other than that it's done.
If I say "Well, I might could try and change that light bulb," I probably don't mean in any particular hurry even to get up off the couch, and indeed may already be dozing off.
This makes logical sense too, doesn't it? "Try and" implies success. I'm not actually saying "I'll try to get it done and I will get it done", if that was the case I'd skip the try, but I am evoking an idea in that direction.
But it doesn't mean that - it just means you will try which doesn't actually imply any level of action
I almost see "try and" as a form of "manifesting", of optimism, of believing that you will succeed. This would sort of comport with what he's saying.
But any difference is subtle, and most native speakers won't notice it, beyond maybe the more formal register of "try to".
Another example is I've seen people several times online trying to argue y'all can be singular and all y'all is a way to make it clearly plural. Ok it's interesting that y'all is used as singular and all y'all isn't just about inclusion, but its not true.
Try to ascertain why I'm on Team "Try To"! (If you feel like trying and! J)
[1]: (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44854639)
I'm curious how common it is in Indian English.
English is not a language that either lends itself well to, or is historically regulated by, prescriptivism (with a few specific attempts that didn't claim universal adoption). Treating it as a language where "If you've heard this novel construct, here's where it came from and what it's related to" is a good way to approach it.
(I liken it often to C++. C++ is so broad that the ways you can glue features together are often novel and sometimes damn near emergent. It's entirely possible to be "a fluent C++ user" and never use curiously recurring template pattern, or consider case-statement fallthrough a bug not a feature, and so on).
The English language has so many little quirks. You can try to document them all, and it's a fun endeavor, but you can't try and document them all.
edit: But so is your own criticism, in that it ignores AAVE is not the only dialect I mentioned. It isn't even one I would say I really speak, except inasmuch as AAVE and my own SAE heavily overlap as the close siblings they are. Both deserve to be treated, not least for that interrelationship, as well as the one you mention with their forcible deracination into mesolect and acrolect slang, where the class origin makes such terms feel "edgy."