Every time I read something like this, I remember that there is truly no correct way to say something - all that matters is that your intended audience understands it, eventually.
gwd · 13m ago
> I remember that there is truly no correct way to say something
Weirdly, that's not what this says. It specifically says you can't say this:
> * John will both try and kill mosquitos.
or
> * I tried and finished the assignment
or
> * Try always and tell the truth
What I'd say instead is: If native speakers say something, then it's grammatically correct. What you were taught is the "prescribed grammar" or "prestige grammar".
Also, grammar is voted on by speakers of a language. I'm generally against making fun of people for deviating from the prestige grammar; but I will "vote against" using the word "literally" to mean "figuratively" as long as I can.
leeoniya · 6m ago
> but I will "vote against" using the word "literally" to mean "figuratively" as long as I can.
Yep "correctness" only exists contextually. A language teacher can say "no that's wrong" with the implied meaning of "that doesnt follow the patterns of the dialect I'm teaching you". Ditto for newspaper editors and their house style.
But in 99% of situations no such context exists and "that's grammatically incorrect" is a bullshit statement.
In the UK when someone "corrects" language what they are very often doing is engaging in class signalling. It's widely done and widely accepted but personally I think it's pointless and somewhat toxic.
(Note many languages have government-sanctioned standard forms of the language, but what I said is still true there too. Nobody speaks that dialect and nobody should be expected to. It's just a "reference implementation".)
Swizec · 3m ago
[delayed]
jfengel · 14m ago
As far as grammar is concerned, yes, that's true.
But register also matters. A communication is about much more than the surface meaning. It conveys a lot about the relationship between speaker and listener. Some languages formalize that grammatically, but it's present in myriad other ways.
Adhering to the arbitrary rules of correctness is one. Saying "try and" in a resume cover letter probably conveys a message of slackness and over-familiarity. Which might be a deliberate choice, but you're better off if you at least know you're making it.
physarum_salad · 28m ago
Yes and constantly obstructing communication is annoying and boring!
Imagine sitting listening to a lecture on quantum effects in biology or something similarly fascinating and someone in the audience obstructs because the lecturer said paetent not patent (or vice versa). Tediomania is awful..feel bad for those affected.
smelendez · 18m ago
> regular coordination permits the order of conjuncts to be changed, while in (7) we see that the same is not possible with try and (De Vos 2005:59).
But sometimes conjunction implies sequential order or causation, right? Which seems related here. “I’m going to take a shower and get this dirt off me” or “I’m going to get some flour and bake a cake.” You can’t change the order. It doesn’t make sense to add both in those cases, either.
It’s also interesting about motion verbs, because I see “he came and picked me up at the station” as an example of two literal sequential actions, versus “he went and picked me up at the station” as more about emphasis, like he did something notable. Which could be good or bad: “he went and got himself arrested again.”
raldi · 1h ago
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”.
WaxProlix · 30m ago
This is a good intuition. The construction is actually sometimes jokingly called the "Try And"-C, where "C" stands for Complementizer, a thing that introduces and subordinates a clause.
foolswisdom · 1h ago
This is also in line with skrebbel's observation in this thread that the phrase indicates a focused attempt.
foldr · 1h 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 · 1h 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 · 1h 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”. [where ___ is the VP ‘go to the store’]
Then you have the various syntactic facts mentioned in the article , such as the possibility of wh-extraction. This isn’t possible in an analogous ellipsis construction:
“What did you try and eat?”
* ”What did you try to and see if you can eat?”
There’s also an interesting tense restriction which suggests that there’s no independent elided clause:
*”I tried and go/went to the store yesterday.”
cwmoore · 52m ago
"What did you try but spit out?"
foldr · 48m ago
That’s a regular case of across-the-board extraction from a coordination (where ‘try’ has a nominal direct object rather than a clausal complement):
What did you try ___ but spit ___ out?
The examples in the linked article involve extraction from just one coordinand, which is impossible in “real” coordinate structures.
echelon · 1h 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).
Linguists don’t say varieties are right or wrong (even though they might have private aesthetic opinions like everyone else). That would be like a biologist saying dogs are the correct version of mammals and cats are wrong and/or don’t exist.
orwin · 30m ago
If a modern linguist call any usage as wrong, I would ask for his diploma and check if I have to close his university, because clearly they shouldn't teach linguistics 101, let alone bring someone towards a PhD. Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive.
unscaled · 19m ago
These are not linguists doing that. No self-respecting linguists will waste time doing prescriptivism. These are two linguistic articles about this constructs that are quoting amateur language usage manuals. The oldest one is a boys magazine[1] published in 1864 discussing "the Queen's English"[2]. The newest one (Crews et al.) seems to be an obscure usage manual for writers[3].
As demonstrated here, "try and" is older and more "original" than "try to", if not contemporary with it. Any other reason why would "try to" be more "correct" cannot even make sense as anything more than a purely uneducated opinion. When you dig deep into most examples of perspectivism you'll usually run into the same story too. "Incorrect" forms often predate the "correct" forms and are often employed by respected writers (such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen). And even if they don't, there isn't really any scientific ground to brand one form as incorrect.
Linguists do not generally engage in linguist prescriptivism. As far as I'm concerned (and I believe most linguists would agree), this is stylistic opinion at best and pseudoscience at worst. Still, it's not linguists can do anything to stop amateurs from publishing prescriptive language usage manuals, so you'll always have people who claim that "try and" or "ain't" or "me and my friend went for a walk" are incorrect.
[2] Yes, this is Edmund Routledge whose father is the namesake of the present scholarly publisher, but they were just publishing popular books back in the 19th century.
The people they’re citing are either authors of usage guides or linguists who are simply noting that the usage has been deemed incorrect by some of the former.
refactor_master · 1h ago
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…”.
arnsholt · 30m ago
Pseudo coordination is a fun phenomenon in Scandinavian. Lots of detail in NALS: https://tekstlab.uio.no/nals#/chapter/65 but an important difference with English is that the Scandinavian construction occurs with many more verbs in the first conjunct, not just _try_.
Waterluvian · 1h 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 · 1h 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.
This article illustrates the main reason why prescriptive grammar is so boring.
If instead of just writing things off as “wrong”, we accept that they happen and try to understand why and under what circumstances, we unlock a whole incredibly interesting new field of science.
treetalker · 2h 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!
starstripe · 52m ago
To me "try and" is like a more confident version of "try to." For example, "I will try to win" vs "I'll try and win."
o11c · 15m ago
That would be "try, and".
Although the default rule for conjunctions joining predicates is that the comma is optional (by contrast, in most other contexts it is either mandatory or forbidden), there are a lot of circumstances where the comma becomes mandatory to avoid ambiguity or just because.
Etheryte · 9m ago
The two are not interchangeable though, as shown in the article. If someone asks you "Are you going to win?", you could say "I'll try to", but not "I'll try and".
fmajid · 32m ago
When I was in high school in France, where they teach British English, we were taught try and is the grammatically correct form.
skrebbel · 1h 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 · 1h 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.
echelon · 52m ago
I grew up in the Southeast, and this usage is common. Both in Southern accents and AAVE.
I agree with skrebbel's feeling about the phrase, and I think yours is also a little bit correct.
To add more character, I also think "try and" feels more casual and friendly. Less like a technical suggestion and more like a form of encouragement. More caring, less distance or annoyance.
"You should try and get some sleep. [I care about you, you poor thing.]" vs "You should try to get some sleep. [Why are you still awake?]"
There's more closeness with "try and" and more distance with "try to".
"Try to" feels formal, technical, distant. "Try and" feels comforting, compassionate, friendly, but definitely not something you'd use for a complex task.
I couldn't imagine "You should try and recalibrate your photon detector" ever being said.
StevenWaterman · 44m ago
I definitely agree with the difference in formality.
> You should try and recalibrate your photon detector
I can totally imagine this, in a lab where all the equipment is old, and out of calibration, and the person saying it knows there are 10 other things that are more important, but this thing is still pretty bad and they feel obligated to point out the issue.
Whereas "try to calibrate" sounds to me like the process of calibration is quite hard and it's likely to end up no better calibrated than you started with.
throwanem · 1h 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 · 1h 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 · 1h 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 · 1h 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 · 1h 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 · 1h 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 · 1h 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 · 1h 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 · 1h ago
Which is identical to "I will try to finish the assignment", so what's your point?
dcminter · 1h 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.
lutusp · 13m ago
This pales when compared to my favorite grammatical annoyance, a common perverse construction, for example "... similar effect to ..." when "... effect similar to ..." is actually intended. This misordering is so common that, in a Web search, it appears to outnumber the canonical ordering.
I acknowledge that terms like "canonical" argue for a nonexistent language authority, and that an acceptable word ordering is any one that conveys what the speaker intends.
umanwizard · 11m ago
I don’t follow, can you give examples of what you mean?
Traubenfuchs · 7m ago
> (a) try (./!)
> She shouted: Try! Try, try, try! Just fucking try it!
> try as you may/might
> try is my favorite word
> try harder
> try 1/2/3/…
> try, quickly!
Do my examples fit in those 3 examples?
Me thinkest thoug dost not knoweth English very well.
And I am not even a native speaker.
But then again, I have no Harvard education, so what do I know.
OJFord · 1h 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 · 58m 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.
OJFord · 55m ago
Ahh, got it, thanks - re-reading it makes more sense with the example of it being possible:
> Usually, coordinated verb phrases can be preceded by both:
> 9) Reality is Broken will both [stimulate your brain and stir your soul].
which would be a better example and clearer to me the first time if it didn't use two nouns ('stimulate and stir your soul').
CGamesPlay · 1h ago
The conjunction is "and", as in "try and kill" vs "kill and try".
jeffbee · 11m ago
Example usage: I will try and figure out how this page is causing the scrollbar to be white-on-white in a way that makes it useless.
cubefox · 12m ago
Not too long from now, Yale will likely also give the "would of" construction its blessing.
umanwizard · 8m ago
This article is not “blessing” anything, it’s trying to understand it. And I promise you that linguists have indeed given thought to why and under what circumstances people write “would of” instead of “would have”.
throwanem · 1h 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 · 1h 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 · 1h 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, and with nothing there or elsewhere to justify the substantial and obvious exclusion, 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."
calvinmorrison · 18m ago
Try and is good. Philadelphia we also have good ones. especially dropping with/tos
- Down the shore
- done school, done work, done dinner.
Also my favorite is anymore:
- gas is so expensive anymore
koops · 1h ago
Randy Meisner was not trying "to" love again. Usage settled.
shadowgovt · 1h 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).
umanwizard · 6m ago
What you’re saying is probably true of all human languages. I don’t know of any where usage is actually governed by a governing body. Some try, e.g. the French Academy, but they are widely ignored in actual usage.
arduanika · 1h 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.
Weirdly, that's not what this says. It specifically says you can't say this:
> * John will both try and kill mosquitos.
or
> * I tried and finished the assignment
or
> * Try always and tell the truth
What I'd say instead is: If native speakers say something, then it's grammatically correct. What you were taught is the "prescribed grammar" or "prestige grammar".
Also, grammar is voted on by speakers of a language. I'm generally against making fun of people for deviating from the prestige grammar; but I will "vote against" using the word "literally" to mean "figuratively" as long as I can.
https://imgur.com/QBTlxf7
But in 99% of situations no such context exists and "that's grammatically incorrect" is a bullshit statement.
In the UK when someone "corrects" language what they are very often doing is engaging in class signalling. It's widely done and widely accepted but personally I think it's pointless and somewhat toxic.
(Note many languages have government-sanctioned standard forms of the language, but what I said is still true there too. Nobody speaks that dialect and nobody should be expected to. It's just a "reference implementation".)
But register also matters. A communication is about much more than the surface meaning. It conveys a lot about the relationship between speaker and listener. Some languages formalize that grammatically, but it's present in myriad other ways.
Adhering to the arbitrary rules of correctness is one. Saying "try and" in a resume cover letter probably conveys a message of slackness and over-familiarity. Which might be a deliberate choice, but you're better off if you at least know you're making it.
Imagine sitting listening to a lecture on quantum effects in biology or something similarly fascinating and someone in the audience obstructs because the lecturer said paetent not patent (or vice versa). Tediomania is awful..feel bad for those affected.
But sometimes conjunction implies sequential order or causation, right? Which seems related here. “I’m going to take a shower and get this dirt off me” or “I’m going to get some flour and bake a cake.” You can’t change the order. It doesn’t make sense to add both in those cases, either.
It’s also interesting about motion verbs, because I see “he came and picked me up at the station” as an example of two literal sequential actions, versus “he went and picked me up at the station” as more about emphasis, like he did something notable. Which could be good or bad: “he went and got himself arrested again.”
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”. [where ___ is the VP ‘go to the store’]
Then you have the various syntactic facts mentioned in the article , such as the possibility of wh-extraction. This isn’t possible in an analogous ellipsis construction:
“What did you try and eat?”
* ”What did you try to and see if you can eat?”
There’s also an interesting tense restriction which suggests that there’s no independent elided clause:
*”I tried and go/went to the store yesterday.”
What did you try ___ but spit ___ out?
The examples in the linked article involve extraction from just one coordinand, which is impossible in “real” coordinate structures.
> 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.
As demonstrated here, "try and" is older and more "original" than "try to", if not contemporary with it. Any other reason why would "try to" be more "correct" cannot even make sense as anything more than a purely uneducated opinion. When you dig deep into most examples of perspectivism you'll usually run into the same story too. "Incorrect" forms often predate the "correct" forms and are often employed by respected writers (such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen). And even if they don't, there isn't really any scientific ground to brand one form as incorrect.
Linguists do not generally engage in linguist prescriptivism. As far as I'm concerned (and I believe most linguists would agree), this is stylistic opinion at best and pseudoscience at worst. Still, it's not linguists can do anything to stop amateurs from publishing prescriptive language usage manuals, so you'll always have people who claim that "try and" or "ain't" or "me and my friend went for a walk" are incorrect.
[1] https://www.victorianresearch.org/atcl/show_periodical.php?j...
[2] Yes, this is Edmund Routledge whose father is the namesake of the present scholarly publisher, but they were just publishing popular books back in the 19th century.
[3] https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Frederick-Crews/dp/0070136386
If instead of just writing things off as “wrong”, we accept that they happen and try to understand why and under what circumstances, we unlock a whole incredibly interesting new field of science.
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)
Although the default rule for conjunctions joining predicates is that the comma is optional (by contrast, in most other contexts it is either mandatory or forbidden), there are a lot of circumstances where the comma becomes mandatory to avoid ambiguity or just because.
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.
I agree with skrebbel's feeling about the phrase, and I think yours is also a little bit correct.
To add more character, I also think "try and" feels more casual and friendly. Less like a technical suggestion and more like a form of encouragement. More caring, less distance or annoyance.
"You should try and get some sleep. [I care about you, you poor thing.]" vs "You should try to get some sleep. [Why are you still awake?]"
There's more closeness with "try and" and more distance with "try to".
"Try to" feels formal, technical, distant. "Try and" feels comforting, compassionate, friendly, but definitely not something you'd use for a complex task.
I couldn't imagine "You should try and recalibrate your photon detector" ever being said.
> You should try and recalibrate your photon detector
I can totally imagine this, in a lab where all the equipment is old, and out of calibration, and the person saying it knows there are 10 other things that are more important, but this thing is still pretty bad and they feel obligated to point out the issue.
Whereas "try to calibrate" sounds to me like the process of calibration is quite hard and it's likely to end up no better calibrated than you started with.
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.
I'm curious how common it is in Indian English.
I acknowledge that terms like "canonical" argue for a nonexistent language authority, and that an acceptable word ordering is any one that conveys what the speaker intends.
> She shouted: Try! Try, try, try! Just fucking try it!
> try as you may/might
> try is my favorite word
> try harder
> try 1/2/3/…
> try, quickly!
Do my examples fit in those 3 examples?
Me thinkest thoug dost not knoweth English very well.
And I am not even a native speaker.
But then again, I have no Harvard education, so what do I know.
> 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.
> Usually, coordinated verb phrases can be preceded by both:
> 9) Reality is Broken will both [stimulate your brain and stir your soul].
which would be a better example and clearer to me the first time if it didn't use two nouns ('stimulate and stir your soul').
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."
- Down the shore - done school, done work, done dinner.
Also my favorite is anymore:
- gas is so expensive anymore
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.