Although it is a little odd and I'm not certain I've seen it in writing, I have definitely heard constructions like "John will both try and kill mosquitos." to mean, "John will both attempt to and succeed in kill[ing] mosquitos."

"John will both try and like sushi" makes perfect sense, although there's an implied "to eat" verb separate from the "to like" verb in there that isn't present in the constructions the article is talking about.

Likewise, "I tried and finished the assignment," means "I tried (to do) the assignment and I finished it." Again, maybe not in writing, but with a certain inflection on 'tried' (where in writing maybe you'd put a comma or semi-colon to indicate a pause) this is something people actually say; although they may emphasis it with "I finally tried and actually finished the assignment." (Whereas maybe previously they weren't confident they could even do it and maybe didn't try.)

Included for no real reason: "They tried and failed, all of them?" "Oh, no." She shook her head. "They tried and died."

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amenhotep 6 days ago | parent [-]

These are all just different constructions that are related to "try and" only by coincidence. The fact that a different construction looks similar to a grammatically incoherent one by coincidence doesn't make the incoherent one coherent.

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mikepurvis 6 days ago | parent [-]

I disagree. GP is laying is laying out reasonable scenarios that are a few dropped/implied words away from the otherwise incoherent ones. For my part, this one is very grating to my ears:

"Try and tell the truth"

Since it clearly should be "try to tell the truth"

However this one, while similar in construction, doesn't actually sound nearly as bad:

"Try and finish the assignment"

It can be fixed the same way ("try to finish") but it also accept GP's form too, which would be "try (to work hard) and (see if you can) finish the assignment". As I say, for whatever reason this second example sounds much more reasonable to me— I think at least in part my brain is much more accepting of a word that feels dropped than one that's misused.

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csande17 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

There's a more standard, general rule in English grammar that web searches tell me is called "delayed right constituent coordination". It lets you read sentences like "He washed and dried the clothes" as "He washed [the clothes] and dried the clothes." The same object gets applied to both verbs.

I suspect that's what you're applying to these sentences. "Try and finish the assignment" makes some sense under this rule if you read it as "Try [the assignment,] and finish the assignment" -- an "assignment" is a thing that makes sense to "try". ("He tried [sushi,] and liked sushi" works for the same reason.) But "Try [the truth,] and tell the truth" doesn't work -- it doesn't make sense to interpret "trying" the truth as some separate action you're taking before you "tell" it.

So probably you just don't have the article's special try-and "pseudo-coordination" rule in your dialect.

	▲	mikepurvis 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		This makes a lot of sense, and it definitely explains where other "try and" sentences work while "try and finish" doesn't at all.

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ricardobeat 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The try and in “try and tell the truth” is a different idiom from “[try] and [x]” as two separate actions. It can almost always be replaced with “try to”.

For example, in “let’s try and finish this” it does not mean trying then finishing, it is try to finish. The construction is more obvious in a phrase like “try and stop me”. This phrasing is very common in movies, it might just not be as popular in your area.

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oasisbob 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Those examples seem to differ significantly because they're using "try" as an imperative.