4 ms·

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”.

by raldi 1y ago

foolswisdom 1y ago
This is also in line with skrebbel's observation in this thread that the phrase indicates a focused attempt.
foldr 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y ago
      "What did you try but spit out?"
      - foldr 1y 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.
        cwmoore 1y ago
        Your examples are not ringing bells for me as a native speaker. The linguistics terms may or may not be confounding, but are too unfamiliar for me to discuss. “Try, and [if successful] [do the thing].”
        foldr 1y ago
        Sorry, I don't understand what you are getting at. What is the significance of the quoted sentence?
- everybodyknows 1y ago
  > I don’t think that’s anything like the meaning of Parent post said "most"; you've identified an exception.
  - foldr 1y ago
    If you check the parent comment, the 'most' applied to the fraction of mysteries, not the the fraction of instances of the construction that the analysis is supposed to apply to. But anyway, this isn't an exception. The overwhelming generalization is that "try and do X" means the same as "try to do X". This holds for imperatives like the OP's example just as much as for my examples. There's very little difference between the to/and variants of any of the following: Try and/to do it quietly Try and/to be a little more polite. Try and/to hand your homework in on time. I agree that in some specific cases there are slightly different shades of meaning. However, this doesn't seem to be a very systematic phenomenon, or one that obviously justifies the assumption that "try and" is an elliptical expression of a complex multi-clausal construction.
echelon 1y 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). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription You can't really reign in language.
- foldr 1y ago
  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.
- orwin 1y 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.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    Then linguistics is worthless. Descriptivism can't actually tell you anything; all someone can say is "yep, you sure are using that word that way". Fortunately prescriptivists still exist despite people's best efforts to give it a bad name.
    - orwin 1y ago
      Linguistics can explain why and how the language evolve, who caused this evolution. I don't know any modern linguist (as in doctor in linguistics) who ever wrote 'you should say this and not that', because all of them knows that languages change. The only 'prescriptivists' are bad philosophers and English majors.
    - briangriffinfan 1y ago
      How can you learn about how people spoke and the patterns that dictate how that changed over time if all you care about is what is considered technically correct at the moment?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
WaxProlix 1y 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.
onionisafruit 1y ago
You can also interpret the Dr Dre quote an abbreviation of, “I’m gonna try (to change the course of hip hop again) and change the course of hip hop again.” In this form “try and” means you will try to do something and that you will succeed. Some of the articles tests make more sense in this light; Of course you wouldn’t reorder the trying and the succeeding because that’s the order the events will happen. This ignores the fact that “try and” developed concurrently with “try to” and possibly before. So it wasn’t originally an abbreviation for a phrase that was yet to be established.
- jjmarr 1y ago
  "I have tried and finished my homework" is correct to my ear (possibly because I'm Canadian), but it means successful completion as opposed to "I have tried to finish my homework" implying I didn't get around to it.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- hyperpape 1y ago
  That's not what "try and" means though. It's perfectly fine to say "I'm gonna try and fix this" when you don't know if you can fix it. (Source: I say that shit all the time).
  - __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
    I would only say "try and" if I thought it was likely that I'd at least make some progress towards the goal. If I expected failure, I'd instead say "try to" fix it.
    - hyperpape 1y ago
      Maybe, but even if true, it's still very clearly different from what the parent said. To me, "I"m gonna try and fix it before I buy a new one, but that's probably what I'm gonna have to do" is a fine sentence.
samiskin 1y ago
I think this capture’s the essence better than anything else, “try and” simply behaving as “try and see if I can” (or whatever fits instead of “I” here)
bendigedig 1y ago
I think "Try and X" means "Try to X and do X" which means to my mind means to attempt and, upon success of the trial, to complete X. "I’ll try and eat the salad." could be expressed as "I'll try eating some of the salad and, if possible, finish eating it."
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
KurSix 1y ago
Over time, people probably stopped needing to say the "and see if you can" part because the meaning was already baked in

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”.

by raldi 1y 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”.

foolswisdom 1y ago

This is also in line with skrebbel's observation in this thread that the phrase indicates a focused attempt.

foldr 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y ago
    "What did you try but spit out?"
    - foldr 1y 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.
      - cwmoore 1y ago
        Your examples are not ringing bells for me as a native speaker. The linguistics terms may or may not be confounding, but are too unfamiliar for me to discuss. “Try, and [if successful] [do the thing].”
        foldr 1y ago
        Sorry, I don't understand what you are getting at. What is the significance of the quoted sentence?
everybodyknows 1y ago
> I don’t think that’s anything like the meaning of Parent post said "most"; you've identified an exception.
- foldr 1y ago
  If you check the parent comment, the 'most' applied to the fraction of mysteries, not the the fraction of instances of the construction that the analysis is supposed to apply to. But anyway, this isn't an exception. The overwhelming generalization is that "try and do X" means the same as "try to do X". This holds for imperatives like the OP's example just as much as for my examples. There's very little difference between the to/and variants of any of the following: Try and/to do it quietly Try and/to be a little more polite. Try and/to hand your homework in on time. I agree that in some specific cases there are slightly different shades of meaning. However, this doesn't seem to be a very systematic phenomenon, or one that obviously justifies the assumption that "try and" is an elliptical expression of a complex multi-clausal construction.

echelon 1y 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). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription You can't really reign in language.

foldr 1y ago
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.
orwin 1y 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.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  Then linguistics is worthless. Descriptivism can't actually tell you anything; all someone can say is "yep, you sure are using that word that way". Fortunately prescriptivists still exist despite people's best efforts to give it a bad name.
  - orwin 1y ago
    Linguistics can explain why and how the language evolve, who caused this evolution. I don't know any modern linguist (as in doctor in linguistics) who ever wrote 'you should say this and not that', because all of them knows that languages change. The only 'prescriptivists' are bad philosophers and English majors.
  - briangriffinfan 1y ago
    How can you learn about how people spoke and the patterns that dictate how that changed over time if all you care about is what is considered technically correct at the moment?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

WaxProlix 1y 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.

onionisafruit 1y ago

You can also interpret the Dr Dre quote an abbreviation of, “I’m gonna try (to change the course of hip hop again) and change the course of hip hop again.” In this form “try and” means you will try to do something and that you will succeed. Some of the articles tests make more sense in this light; Of course you wouldn’t reorder the trying and the succeeding because that’s the order the events will happen. This ignores the fact that “try and” developed concurrently with “try to” and possibly before. So it wasn’t originally an abbreviation for a phrase that was yet to be established.

jjmarr 1y ago
"I have tried and finished my homework" is correct to my ear (possibly because I'm Canadian), but it means successful completion as opposed to "I have tried to finish my homework" implying I didn't get around to it.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
hyperpape 1y ago
That's not what "try and" means though. It's perfectly fine to say "I'm gonna try and fix this" when you don't know if you can fix it. (Source: I say that shit all the time).
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  I would only say "try and" if I thought it was likely that I'd at least make some progress towards the goal. If I expected failure, I'd instead say "try to" fix it.
  - hyperpape 1y ago
    Maybe, but even if true, it's still very clearly different from what the parent said. To me, "I"m gonna try and fix it before I buy a new one, but that's probably what I'm gonna have to do" is a fine sentence.

samiskin 1y ago

I think this capture’s the essence better than anything else, “try and” simply behaving as “try and see if I can” (or whatever fits instead of “I” here)

bendigedig 1y ago

I think "Try and X" means "Try to X and do X" which means to my mind means to attempt and, upon success of the trial, to complete X. "I’ll try and eat the salad." could be expressed as "I'll try eating some of the salad and, if possible, finish eating it."

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

KurSix 1y ago

Over time, people probably stopped needing to say the "and see if you can" part because the meaning was already baked in