Try and figure out the difference!

[pne]

I was just thinking about how German appears to not make a distinction that is present in English (along with the well-known, I suppose, bit about not distinguishing between "The students, who study hard, will succeed" and "The students who study hard will succeed" since such clauses are always set off by commas in German).

Specifically, I make a distinction between "try to press the button" and "try pressing the button". For me, the first means something like "I don't think you can press the button, but feel free to prove me wrong" while the second is something like "I think you can press the button and believe that doing so may help you achieve your (unspecified) goal, so I encourage you to press it".

For, perhaps, a better explanation, consider the first thing that comes to mind when completing the sentence "He ____ the button, but...": I come up with something like "He tried to press the button, but couldn't reach it" and "He tried pressing the button, but nothing happened", respectively.

I think that in German both would be "Er versuchte, den Knopf zu drücken". (Though I might render "try pressing" with "Er versuchte es damit, den Knopf zu drücken".)

As for the third alternative in English, "try and press the button", I tend not to use it (possibly under the influence of my prescriptivist father's views on "proper English"), but I'd consider it equivalent to "try to press the button", rather than to "try pressing the button".

Comments

[lexabear.livejournal.com]

I second your distinction between "try to"/"try -ing." Furthermore, the "try and" variant, for me, usually has the connotation of making a dare/challenge - e.g. "Try and stop me." I would only use it as an imperative, and not indicitive. "He tried and..." just sounds wrong.

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

I think you're right! But it *is* a peculiar distinction, isn't it?

And in answer to the second part, I recall hearing or reading somewhere that try to and try and tend to be mutually exclusive in any one person's speech, and that in practice they usually mean pretty much the same thing: I want you to try to press the button and I want you to try and press the button seem identical to me. I agree with lexabear, though: He tried and pressed the button strikes me as very strange. But in the future tense it seems OK: He will try and press the button.

Maybe try and is limited to imperatives and subordinate clauses?

[tungol.livejournal.com]

I think the limit on try and is that it can't take inflections. So I'd say 'He'll try and do it', but not '*He tries and does it' or '*He's trying and doing it'.

[timwi.livejournal.com]

Yep. And this, in turn, is probably due to the fact that "try and" is an aberration of "try to", so you expect it to be followed by an infinitive.

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Yep, that sounds right to me.

[marikochan.livejournal.com]

That's how I think of it, and how I explain it. I find it convenient that there's an equivalent distinction in Japanese (though I don't think the two forms are related):

すしを食べようとしたけど、出来なかった。 <-- where it's too large, or something
すしを食べてみたけど、好きじゃなかった。

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

I think "Er versuchte, den Knopf zu drücken" means "He tried to press the button". At least without any further context it seems unlikely to mean "tried pressing".

I guess the most natual expression for "He tried pressing the button" might be "Er versuchte es, indem er den Knopf drückte."