trying

I've written before about the å, at, að, and, to confusion in Scandinavian and English forms of the present progressive. It occurred to me today that another good test phrase would be to try to do. In standard Norwegian that would be prøve å gjøre; in standard Icelandic reyna að gera. The form is the same: verb plus infinitive marker plus another infinitive.

Nonetheless I am aware in English of the non-standard construction try and do something. In fact I find here some interesting light thrown on that very construction and some similar ones. Another fellow here shows how it does not work in all tenses, which is interesting, and makes me wonder what relationship it has, if any, to forms of the present progressive. The claim that it is illogical, however, is beside the point. Rationalize grammar all you like, and it will continue on its merry, whistling way and ignore you.

The non-standard try+and+infinitive construction is all over the web. Even limited a Google search to the phrase try and see if yields an awesome 70,000 plus hits. The standard equivalent, try to see if, is more frequent, but not even by a factor of two.

What's intriguing to me is that Norwegian and Icelandic have exactly parallel constructions, and each even comes down on the same side of which is standard and which non-standard---unlike in the case of the present progressive.

Compare Norwegian and the phrases prøver å gjøre (try to do) and prøver og gjør (try and do). The standard prøver å gjøre gives about 9150 hits. Non-standard prøver og gjør gives many fewer, less than 30, and glancing over the list I see that the search has kicked up a couple of hits that are not actually examples of this construction. Nonetheless the non-standard form, which is exactly parallel to the non-standard English form, is out there and in use.

Icelandic has the standard phrase reyna að gera (try to do) and the non-standard reyna og gera (try and do). Reyna að gera has plenty of hits, over 3000, even though the robust morphology of this language means that the search is limited to cases in the infinitive or 3rd person plural present indicative. Reyna og gera boasts very few hits, only four, but all of them are exactly the type of usage I am talking about. It, too, seems to be in some use.

What does this all mean? Honestly, I am not sure yet, but I certain to keep gnawing on it. Try and make me stop, just try.