I'm gonna try and change the course of hip hop again. Typically, try can be followed by three kinds of phrases: a noun phrase (1a), an infinitival verb phrase with to (1b), or a verb phrase with -ing…
Typically, try can be followed by three kinds of phrases: a noun phrase (1a), an infinitival verb phrase with to (1b), or a verb phrase with -ing (1c).
1) a. I'll try the salad.
b. I'll try to eat this horrible salad.
c. I'll try adding vinegar to the salad, to improve the taste.
However, try can also combine with the conjunction and, followed by a bare verb form:
2) I’ll try and eat the salad.
This usage is very similar in meaning to try to, if not identical, but is deemed prescriptively incorrect (Routledge 1864:579 in D. Ross 2013a:120; Partridge 1947:338, Crews et al. 1989:656 in Brook & Tagliamonte 2016:320). In the next few sections, we will see that it has a number of interesting properties.
Who says this?
Try and is described as more prevalent in British English than American English, but is common in both varieties (Hommerberg & Tottie 2007). Brook & Tagliamonte (2016) show that Canadian speakers pattern with American speakers in their usage of the construction.
Try and is not a recent innovation – it first emerged in the late 1500s, although the earliest textual attestion is from 1390 (Tottie 2012, D. Ross 2013a). Tottie (2012) provides some examples of try and from EEBO-TCP corpus, including this one:
3) ...howe and by what certaine and generall rule I mighte trye and throughly discerne the veritie of the catholike faithe, from the falsehood of wicked heresye... (1554)
4) You maie (saide I) trie and bring him in, and shewe him to her. (1569)
Webster’s Dictionary (1989:919) suggests that try and in fact predates try to, and this conclusion is supported by Hommerberg & Tottie (2007:60), Tottie & Hoffman (2011) and Tottie (2012). However, D. Ross (2013a) disputes this, saying that “[t]ry and and try to developed simultaneously and independently”. What is clear is that try and has been around for at least as long as try to.
Syntactic Properties
Carden & Pesetsky (1977:86) note that try and does not behave like a regular case of coordination.
Question words are allowed
One property of ‘true’ coordination is that it is subject to the Coordinate Structure Constraint (J. Ross 1967), which states that a wh-word cannot move out of one of the conjuncts. This is shown in (5).
5) a. Mary [met Bill and ignored Susie].
b. *Who did Mary [meet Bill and ignore __]?
However, a wh-word can happily be moved out of a try and structure:
6) Who did Mary [try and talk to __]?
No reordering
A second property of pseudo-coordination that distinguishes it from regular coordination is that the two conjuncts cannot be reordered. In (6), we see that 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).
7) a. John will wash the bathroom and kill mosquitos.
b. John will kill mosquitos and wash the bathroom.
8) a. John will try and kill mosquitos.
b. *John will kill mosquitos and try.
Both is not possible
Another piece of evidence that try and is not regular coordination structure comes from the unavailability of both. Usually, coordinated verb phrases can be preceded by both:
9) Reality is Broken will both [stimulate your brain and stir your soul]. [source, February 28 2017]
However, De Vos (2005:59) points out that try and may not be preceded by both:
10) a. John will try and kill mosquitos.
b. *John will both try and kill mosquitos.
Bare form only
Unlike with regular coordination, try and is available only when both try and the verb following and are uninflected, which means it must occur in its bare form. Carden & Pesetsky (1977) call this the bare form condition. The following examples are adapted from D. Ross (2013a:111):
11) a. I will try and finish the assignment.
b. I try and finish an assignment every day.
c. *I tried and finish(ed) the assignment.
d. *He tries and finish(es) an assignment every day.
e. *It’s tough when you’re trying and finish(ing) an assignment under pressure.
Dialect variation in the Bare Form Condition
Is the bare form condition universal? D. Ross (2013a:124-5) notes that it has weakened in some dialects, though not necessarily in the same way. In dialects of Northeastern Canada, parallel inflected forms are acceptable:
12) They tries and does that.
In South African English, on the other hand, try may be inflected while the second verb remains a bare form (examples from D. Ross 2013a:125):
13) a. Noeleen tries and find answers and solutions. [source, August 2006]
b. We’re trying and get across that nature is harsh but not necessarily full of malice and cruelty. (Dereck Joubert on “Wild about Africa,” Carte Blanche: March 18, 2007)
No separation of try and and
There are some other restrictions on the distribution of try and. Unlike with try to, try may not be separated from and by an adverb (Webster’s Dictionary 1989:919):
14) a. Try always to tell the truth.
b. *Try always and tell the truth.
Similarly, try may not be separated from and by negation (Brook & Tagliamonte 2016:308):
15) a. You try not to let it bother you.
b. *You try not and let it bother you.
No ellipsis allowed
Try and is incompatible with ellipsis of the following verb phrase (Brook & Tagliamonte 2016):
16) a. Sure, I'll try to.
b. *Sure, I'll try and.
Other instances of pseudocoordination
Infinitival to can be replaced by and in several other cases, subject to dialectal and individual variation. Brook & Tagliamonte (2016:302) state that the best candidate for a verb phrase that behaves like try is be sure:
17) Be sure and visit Harry tomorrow. (Carden & Pesetsky 1977:84)
D. Ross (2013a:122) provides several examples of other verb phrases in which infinitival to has been replaced with and:
18) a. Mind and get all right for next Saturday. (Poutsma 1905:361)
b. You know I go to all these different schools and I start and get mixed up after a while. (Hopper 2002:162)
c. Remember and wash your hair. (BNC: KE4 636, 1992)
Another instance of pseudocoordination is found with motion verbs, such as come and go:
19) a. Can you come and pick me up from the station?
b. I’ll go and get the mop.
D. Ross (2013b) argues that motion verb pseudocoordination has a different syntax and semantics from try and pseudocoordination. Syntactically, we can see that motion verb pseudocoordination is not subject to the bare form condition:
20) a. He came and picked me up from the station.
b. She goes and gets lunch every day at noon.
Semantically, go and entails that the event was completed, so in (21) below it is strange to use go and if the book was not acquired. In contrast, its non-pseudocoordination equivalent go to does not have this entailment.
21) The man will go to/*and buy the book, even if it is sold out.
Page contributed by Matthew Tyler on Feb 23, 2018.
Updates/revisions: June 27, 2018 (Katie Martin)
Please cite this page as: Tyler, Matthew. 2018. Try and. Yale Grammatical Diversity Project: English in North America. (Available online at http://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/try-and. Accessed on YYYY-MM-DD). Updated by Katie Martin (2018).
References
Read the original article
Comments
At first glance, I thought this was some new TC39 JavaScript syntax proposal.
This is a cool site. I thought I'd look for a page about my favorite syntactic phenomenon, "what all", and not only did I find it, but also they changed the "Who says this?" section header to "Who all says this?"
Why, "try and" could be like "try / finally", and "what all" could be filter().
I won't mind "await y'all" to await multiple promises.
By AlienRobot 2025-08-1110:212 reply What if...
And the catch can't catch a division by zero error because it occurred inside an "and" block.try { let x = parseInt(input); and { displayResult(x / 0); } } catch { displayError("Parsing error.") }By sillysaurusx 2025-08-1113:23 In practice you can move the displayResult(x / 0) outside the try catch. It’s hard to think of a counterexample that comes up in practice.
There might be something to this idea, because I’ve often been in situations where a try catch catches an error that originates a dozen frames down the call stack, which is sometimes (but not always) unrelated to the original point of the try catch block. People try and deal with this by adding more try catches around the code deeper in the call stack, but maybe there’s a better way.
By rcxdude 2025-08-1112:11 That's kind of like python's try/else, but not quite (the 'and' would be more general, if you can interleave them with statements in the try block)
By thaumasiotes 2025-08-114:271 reply They seem to be missing the incipient disappearance of the -en form of verbs, with people saying things like "I should have went" instead of "I should have gone".
It isn't clear why they feature the constructions they do. They are titled "Yale Grammatical Diversity Project", but the constructions are not necessarily examples of grammatical diversity:
> Have yet to is a construction that appears in most, if not all, varieties of English.
> this construction appears to be distributed across speakers in all regions and demographic groups.
> Repetition clefts are quite widespread in English and can be observed as early as the mid-17th century
> They are robustly attested in contemporary North American English and are also used in the UK. Related constructions have been observed in Australian English (McConvell 2004) and in a corpus of New Zealand English speech as well
> the usage of repetition clefts does not apparently correlate with any sociodemographic features.
By nroets 2025-08-113:44 What is this JavaScript thing ?
I guess I come from a different era:
By sudhirb 2025-08-1114:49 Anecdotally I think I have heard "what all" most commonly spoken by Indian English speakers - though that's probably quite far outside the scope of this site.
Feels like one of those constructions you don't notice until someone points it out, and then you start hearing it everywhere
Possibly-interesting comparison: in Japanese, the way to talk about trying to do some verb-phrase X, is "Xて見る" — which is usually literally translated as "we'll try [X]ing", but which breaks down into "[verb-phrase X in present tense] [the verb "to see" in whatever tense you mean.]"
Which means that the construction can be most intuitively framed (at least by an English speaker) as either "we'll see [what happens when] we [X]"... or, more relevantly, "we'll try [X] and see [what happens/how it goes]." Or, for short: "we'll try and [X]."
By tomsmeding 2025-08-1017:474 reply It's even better. The "X-te" (Xて) is technically not X in present tense, it is specifically X in the te-form (て is read "te").
The te-form has a bunch of different uses, but in the case of "verb-te verb", if the second verb is not one of a list of special verbs (of which miru (見る, to see) is one), X-te Y normally means "X and Y". For example, yorugohan o tsukutte taberu (夜ご飯を作って食べる) means "(to/I/we/you/...) make dinner and eat it": yorugohan is dinner, the "o" is a particle marking the direct object, tsukuru means to make (becomes tsukutte in the te-form) and taberu means to eat. (The first word in English is ambiguous because grammatical subjects are usually optional in Japanese, plus its verbs are not inflected for person or number.)
For a number of verbs, however, if they are in the second position, the phrase gets a special meaning. If it's miru, e.g. tsukutte miru, it means "to try to make" — or perhaps more aptly, "to try and make". If it's iku (行く, to go), it means "to go X-ing": tabete iku (where taberu (to eat) -> tabete in the te-form) is "to go to eat [something]", or perhaps: "to go and eat [something]".
Not all such special verbs correspond to English pseudocoordination though; a common one is shimau (the dictionary says "to finish / to stop", but it's uncommon in bare form), where e.g. tabete shimau means "to finish eating" or "to end up eating" / "to eat accidentally" depending on context.
The analogy between English and Japanese here is likely coincidental, but it's amusing nevertheless.
This is a nice explanation; I wish that duolingo hadn't removed their user comment/explanation section, which used to contain similar (though not always correct, which is probably part of why they removed them.)
Pro tip: Duolingo is a game and basically a dead end for properly learning a language. If you want to really learn, you need to build intuition, and that only comes from huge amounts of level-appropriate input. Find yourself some good native language podcasts that are targeted at language learners and native reading material. Search for "Refold" for a better strategy (no affiliation, it's just awesome), and make sure that whatever you do, you enjoy it. Language learning is a marathon, the fun is in the journey, not just the destination.
By johnisgood 2025-08-117:38 I always say, that if you want to learn a language, then surround yourself with it.
I learned all languages I know this way. When it comes to Polish, I mainly saw people writing in that language without knowing much. Translator came to the rescue. I picked up common words and phrases that way, and it helped with grammar, too, but it was not a fast process as it is a difficult language. I do not speak it well, although I speak it understandably enough, because I did not listen nor speak to people in the language much, as opposed to English, and this includes movies, TV series, etc.
Spanish was easy, all it took was a translator and long conversations with 2 people and some music. :D Pronunciation is not an issue, my native language helped.
French would have been a bit more difficult to learn, as I have tried, then lost interest and reasons to do so.
I am trying to learn Arabic, but for me, that is a whole different one.
By lazyasciiart 2025-08-1023:212 reply Plenty of people enjoy Duolingo. And I wouldn’t say it’s a dead end any more than simple picture books or a total beginners class. Will it turn you into a fluent speaker? No, so what.
> No, so what.
Because it promotes itself as a platform to learn fluency. That’s why it’s important to recognize its limitations.
By lazyasciiart 2025-08-114:501 reply I guess I just don’t know anyone who doesn’t recognize the limitations, perhaps that’s a function of an environment where we all know multiple languages already.
By nyeah 2025-08-1112:43 If literally everyone recognizes the limitations, then Duolingo won't be harmed by changing their advertising to be accurate.
By lambdaphagy 2025-08-112:201 reply My impression of duolingo was strongly influenced by a former PM who said basically what OP said without any hint of ill will in their voice. Duolingo discovered that it was easier to reward-hack short term signals of language learning instead of scaffolding those signals into longterm language learning. Today it’s essentially Candy Crush for people who think they’re too smart for Candy Crush.
That’s not even a diss, it’s just The Way Of The World when you are directly rewarded for growth and retention and very indirectly for language learning.
> Today it’s essentially Candy Crush for people who think they’re too smart for Candy Crush.
That's overly harsh. I use Duolingo for Japanese because
- I thought it would be fun to learn a little about Japanese. And I do learn some, and it is fun.
- I wanted to "understand" a bit of what was being said during subtitled anime I watch. This was _partially_ successful. I understand some words, and I notice some things like "oh, that was a question", and sometimes notice when what was said doesn't match the text. I get enough out of it that it adds to my enjoyment
So, clearly there's a group of people out there that are there to gain some knowledge out of it, and _not_ to rack up some kind of score (and feel superior).
By lambdaphagy 2025-08-1423:09 Sorry, that came out as unnecessarily harsh on users when it was intended for Duolingo’s product department. I don’t mean to suggest that the amount of language learning is literally zero, just that whenever language learning is in tension with legible metrics, the latter tends to win out internally.
It's an interesting coincidence, but I think there is a reason that the te-form in Japanese is much more fruitful than "and" in English in producing these constructs. Japanese verbs have too conjunctive forms: te-form and ren'youkei[1] (continuative form). Ren'youkei、 is more formal and has a different but overlapping range of conditions in which it can be used. The "te-form" itself was originally[2] just the ren'youkei conjugation of a special auxiliary verb "tsu", that is used to mark a completed action.
Neither of these forms is nearly as flexible as the conjunction "and" in English. For one, they can only connect verbs and one class of adjectives, but another important point is that the actions described by the verbs need to occur sequentially in time, with the action marked by '-te' occuring earlier. You cannot use either of these forms to say something like "The dog kept jumping and wagging its tail" or "It's important to both eat and drink".
If we compare this to how linguists define "pseudocoordination" in English and other Germanic languages, then every instance of the te-form or ren'youkei in Japanese is pseudocoordination and not real coordination: you cannot reorder the verbs freely, you cannot add "both", and you can use an interrogative pronoun. Since these limitations apply to every use of the te-form and ren'youkei, not just the "special case" ones, it makes these form more amenable for building special construct. Add the fact that Japanese does not have an infinitive form, and you end up with either of these forms as the most natural way to attach auxiliary verbs in Japanese.
Now you end up with a plethora of constructions (demonstrated with the verb 作る tsukuru "to make"):
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_conjugation#Conjuncti...作ってみる tsukutte miru (make and see) try to make 作ってみせる tsukutte miseru (make and show) prove that [I] can make it 作っていく tsukutte iku (make and go) gradually make (or make more and more) 作ってしまう tsukutte shimau (make and complete) finish making or "oh shit he really ended up making that" (the MORE common meaning in this case) 作ってください tsukutte kudasai (make and give (imperative)) Please make[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/v08pbp/brief...
By derefr 2025-08-1116:07 > (make and complete) finish making or "oh shit he really ended up making that" (the MORE common meaning in this case)
I would note that we have that one in [vernacular] English, too, but only in the past tense: "done [X]ed", i.e. "he really done made that."
> (make and go) gradually make (or make more and more)
And we have a construction equivalent to this, but that means more like "set out to [X]" — that being "go and [X]." I.e. "now why'd you go and make that?"
By trealira 2025-08-1018:49 Funnily enough, this has resulted in people saying things like "見てみましょう" and "見てみてください", which confused me at first. But I suppose this is like non-native English speakers being confused by the extra "do" in phrases like "I already did do my work."
Hungarian works the same, well I guess the few agglutinative languages do share this element
By hackyhacky 2025-08-1022:39 > Hungarian works the same, well I guess the few agglutinative languages do share this element
Not sure what you mean. In Hungarian, the verb meaning "to try" is (meg)próbálni, which does not mean "to see." Its argument is typically given as an infinitive verb, which would never be translated using the pseudocoordination described above, and there is no related form that would be translated as "and".
The point I was waiting for them to get to was saved for last: entails completion.
Try to do something, you might or might not do it. “I’m going to try to persuade them to decide in my favor.”
Try and do something, you expect to get it done one way or another. “I’m goin down there to try and straighten them out.”
I don’t have a long history of research in this going back to the 1500s, but I grew up in southeast Texas, and this is how I’ve always understood it to be used around here, when it is used with any intention at least.
By purplehat_ 2025-08-114:22 Interesting, where I’m from in southern california, “try and” doesn’t entail completion. (The article only mentions this for “go and”, which here does indeed entail expected completion.)
By KurSix 2025-08-118:00 Funny how the grammar write-ups treat it as basically synonymous with "try to," but the lived nuance can be totally different depending on where you grew up.
Yeah, maybe it's regional. I hear "tryan get some peace and quiet" about the same as "tryta get some piece and quiet. Maybe the former is more confident. But tone of voice probably matters more than the words.
FWIW I grew up mostly in the Northeast.
By matthewkayin 2025-08-1115:481 reply I'm surprised there was no mention of accent. For their example "It’s tough when you’re trying and finish(ing) an assignment under pressure.", I can't help but hear "It's tough when you're tryna finish an assignment under pressure.", which really is more like "trying to" than "trying and finishing".
Yeah if I wrote "tryna" out nicely, I would spell it "trying to". So but that's my accent accounted for. There are a lot out there.
By mikestorrent 2025-08-1120:26 This makes sense - "tryna" -> "tryn ta" -> "trying to". "Tryan" -> try and.
By mikestorrent 2025-08-1120:25 I concur with "tryan" - it's its own word, IMO, in my mind. I had never seen "Try and X" sentences written out before this article, even though I say "tryan" all the time.
"Could you wash the dog?"
Is not a question asking whether the person is capable of washing the dog. It's a command phrased politely.
"Try to wash the dog"
"Try and wash the dog"
If you had no prior information on whether the dog likes water or not, I'd say that the try-and version expresses a greater level of confidence that washing the dog will be successful, in other words it's a command.
Whereas try-to could be read either straight (this task may fail) or as a command phrased politely.
By cratermoon 2025-08-1113:401 reply The linguistic prescriptivist in in me cringes at "try and", but I recognize usage has moved on.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/were-going-to-explai...
When prescriptivism is balking at usages that have been continuously in effect for four centuries, the problem is not with the usage. The prescriptivism you're using is suspect.
By antonvs 2025-08-171:25 Haha I love it. Yiddish constructions ftw.
By llbbdd 2025-08-1115:14 Prescriptivism is silly anyway, you'd be better off counting sand.
By nyeah 2025-08-1116:40 Yeah. Prescriptivism may have a worthwhile role to play. But it needs to be a lot more thought out than "what some authority wrote 75 years ago".
By elliotec 2025-08-115:35 It still implies possibility of failure, but in the example of the commenter above, that possibility is almost low enough to the point of expectation (but not quite) and "try to" would increase that possibility in the direction of failure. Nuance!
By nonotthat 2025-08-1113:16 As someone who understands usage of “try and” outside of the Yale definition, it suggests will and belief in possibility, which is probable unless the speaker does not sound confident, in which case it’s still will and belief in possibility but not necessarily will and belief in probability.
By iqandjoke 2025-08-118:21 So when I ask people to do me a favor, use "try and". And when I need to answer somebody, use "try to".
