Merriam-Webster, in the article linked above, doesn’t agree with you:
In summary: When try is used to mean “to make an attempt at” it’s often followed by an infinitive phrase, as in “try to explain.” A lot of people don’t like it when and appears in place of the to: “try and explain.” There is, however, nothing wrong with try and, and you should feel free to use it. It’s most at home in informal settings, but is not grammatically problematic and is in fact about the same age as (and is very possibly older than) try to.
I saw that Merriam-Webster quote some time ago. What is it that you think they’re disagreeing with me about? They’re saying two things. First, that “try and …” should be regarded as acceptable in informal settings. Since everybody and his dog has been talking that way for years, this is true. But it’s still not proper standard English. Second, they’re saying that “try and …” is as old and possibly older than “try to …”. This is true, but the whole point here, as @SciFiSam first pointed out, is that there’s substantial etymological evidence that it originally meant something completely different, where the “and” conjunction made sense. So pointing out how old the usage is is very misleading. If “try” still meant “test and evaluate” – to figuratively put on trial – then “try and do it” (“try it, and then do it”) would be perfectly correct.
You: “That’s a great point which invalidates any claim that “try and do” predates “try to do”.”
Merriam-Webster: “[Try and] is in fact about the same age as (and is very possibly older than) try to.”
The earlier meaning of ‘test or prove’ is beside the point. We are talking here of the meaning ‘attempt’, which is used in both ‘try and’ and ‘try to’.
The earlier meaning is not “beside the point”, it is the whole point. I’m agreeing that “try and do” is the older expression, but this is irrelevant because the different meaning of “try” at the time made that usage correct at the time. Today it’s a linguistic aberration that is acceptable in informal use only because it’s become so entrenched, like the other language abuses that have been amply discussed elsewhere.
Just to note. 99%* of all human expression is not in “proper English.” For all practical purposes, nobody ever has to worry about proper English. I wrote a book for an academic press and the picky copyeditor didn’t try to force me into proper English. My English has a personal tone that is not academese and so is far more readable and enjoyable.
If I don’t need to worry about proper English, then what circumstances would require it?
Fuck proper English. Colloquial English with correct grammar is the highest state virtually everybody needs in virtually every situation. Arguments about whether a term or phrase is proper English went out as soon as the American Heritage Usage Panel discovered that no two of them agreed in totality about what was proper. And that was in 1966.
“Proper English” sounds like the admonition of a schoolmarm, but I just use it as an informal term to mean English as defined in dictionaries and the commonly accepted rules of grammar. Whether this includes usage regarded as “colloquial” is entirely a gray area that depends on the formality of the speech or writing, which also determines which colloquialisms may be acceptable and which are not. I have no problem with informal usage when appropriate, or even deliberate solecisms if they serve a useful lighthearted purpose. The key is “the right word in the right place at the right time”, to quote the title of one of William Safire’s notable books.
I trust that more or less answers the question about “what circumstances would require [proper English]” (and what circumstances would not), but I’ll add another point. Steven Pinker is one of the more zealous defenders of laissez-faire descriptivism. I disagree with many of his rationalizations, but that’s beside the point. The point I’m making is that besides being a well-regarded linguist and cognitive scientist, he is also a superb writer. No matter what he’s writing about, his mastery of language makes the flow of his words sometimes positively lyrical. I find it deeply ironic when he uses his flawless and beautifully crafted prose to defend and justify language misuse by ignoramuses. So yeah, what circumstances would require proper English? – apparently, Steven Pinker feels that his own writing is one such circumstance.
As for your book, Exapno, I haven’t seen it, but I strongly suspect it would show an excellent command of language, and that I would entirely approve, colloquialisms or not. This argument is not about “tone”, it’s about misuse of language due to carelessness or ignorance.
I absolutely love the irony here. You’re using a non-standard meaning of “proper English” to castigate people who use non-standard English in ways you alone don’t think of as proper.
Apparently you’re easily amused, but your amusement is misplaced. I was clear that I have no problem with idioms or necessarily with colloquialisms. I don’t necessarily even have a problem with neologisms invented on the fly. And the loose term “proper English” I think is fairly obviously synonymous with the formal term “standard English”.
I thought I gave a reasonable answer to your question. If you disagree with it, maybe you could address my actual argument.
The problem is, you referred to the try and do construction as “a linguistic aberration that is acceptable in informal use only because it’s become so entrenched, like the other language abuses that have been amply discussed elsewhere.”
That doesn’t sound like someone who thinks such is acceptable. You call it “linguistic abuse” that is only deemed acceptable because it is “entrenched”—as if that’s any different from any other aspect of English. Those are words that communicate “and this should not be the case!”
You can argue that the construction as currently used, is idiomatic, and as it doesn’t mean the same thing as the words parsed individually. But it’s still standard English. It is only considered unacceptable by the same people who think you can never end a sentence with a preposition or begin a sentence with a coordinating conjunction.
It really is only the schoolmarms that would mark “try and do” as incorrect these days. And, apparently, they don’t even do that in the UK.
You’re so good on other matters that I am bemused* by your continued idiosyncratic and outdated views on applying language standards to situations where they are not at all useful. We are going to continue disagreeing on this, especially because you don’t even pretend to be consistent on the issue, as I stated earlier and BigT confirmed. I’ll support you all the way times when you’re right, but this ain’t one of those.
*Bemused “properly” means confused but so often these days is used as a synonym for amused that even context isn’t helpful many times. I’m using it in a context where either meaning might be valid. Or both. Such is English.
Try can be followed by a gerund or a infinitive-to (or a noun); if you try and do something, it’s probably not grammatically accurate, but it is an expression with an understood meaning.
I’m under no illusion that anyone is going to change an entrenched usage. But look, linguists like Steven Pinker and Geoff Pullum have devoted a great deal of analytical energy trying to rationalize why certain constructs felt by some prescriptivists to be wrong are in fact perfectly acceptable. It seems reasonable to at least apply the same kind of analysis to the converse, in this case the fact that “try and” is ungrammatical in the context of its modern meaning, even if the parts of speech parse correctly in a different, archaic meaning. It’s not so much declaring that “this should not be the case” as commenting on what it reveals about the language skills of the speaker, or at least their carelessness.
I’m not sure I’d even call it idiomatic. It’s certainly not a metaphor. Regardless, whether it’s “standard English” depends on whether you’re willing to include in the definition the entire set of what dictionaries record as “informal” or “colloquial” usages. I’m not. The ones I would include depends on the setting in which the language is being used. Some I wouldn’t consider to be standard English under any circumstances. Some time ago, for instance, I heard a radio interview with a high school student who so liberally peppered her speech with “like” that she seemed unable to utter more than two consecutive words without “like” intervening. Is that “standard English”? Like, not in my, like, world.
That is manifestly false, as I consider it unacceptable but I have no problem with ending a sentence with a preposition or beginning one with a conjunction. The latter are pointless arbitrary rules that someone invented. They accomplish nothing in the service of linguistic clarity. As Churchill was said to have famously responded when criticized for ending a sentence with a preposition, “This is the type of errant pedantry up with which I will not put.”
I don’t think my position is inconsistent. I think it’s nuanced. What I do find inconsistent are zealous descriptivists who assure us that language definitely has rules, and then proceed to fervently defend some ungrammatical abomination. I once heard one of these descriptivists claim that if he can figure out what someone is trying to say, then the statement in question is ipso facto correct English, since the purpose of language is to communicate, and evidently communication has occurred. By that standard, grunting is an admirable exemplar of the Queen’s English. My concept of language is rather narrower than that.
Then that person either mis-spoke or you misunderstood. I’m sure you know that descriptivism discovers rules of language and codifies them, as well. A sentence like “bone the dog eat” would be considered ungrammatical by a descriptivist*, even though its meaning is clear. In my dialect, we say things like “borrow me a buck” and “i ain’t got no money” and they are grammatical. In the prestige dialect of American English, they are considered non-standard. But “me a buck borrow” would be considered wrong in both. It’s not the case that there are no rules if you’re approaching language from a descriptivist perspective.
For me, I embrace change. I don’t always like it, but I love that our language morphs and mutates and I would hope any lover of language would feel the same. It’s dirty, it’s goofy, it’s often illogical. I have no fear that language will debase itself into gibberish, which is what I feel many of the language mavens fear. And, yes, some of the push back from prescriptivists, I suppose, keeps things from changing too quickly, but I don’t view it as a fight between descriptivism and prescriptivism. Language will change and mutate no matter what. It is the descriptivists’ job simply to observe and take note. Descriptivists aren’t telling anyone how to write or how to speak, merely how languages are written and spoken, with no silly value judgments like “ungrammatical abomination” and “misuse by ignoramuses.” This ignoramus could care less.
*unless there is a dialect of English in which this form exists and a survey of its speakers deem grammatical.
