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Science Forum Index » Languages Forum » Venn Diagram of the English Catenatives
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| Wolf Kirchmeir |
 Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 3:19 pm |
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On 24 Jan 2004 15:18:49 -0800, endipatterson@yahoo.com wrote:
Quote: From my diagram,
compare:
"Try resting a while - you might feel better then.
"Try" followed by a gerund means experiment to see what will happen.
with
"Alan tried to stop the thief."
"try" followed by "to" and the infinitive means "attempt".
But in the imperative, both "Try to stop the thief" and "Tray and stop the
thief" are used.
Quote: We can say, "try and rest."
I prefer "Try to rest".
Quote: but we can't say, *"Alan tried and stop(ped) the thief."
Yes, we can. It means he attempted and succeeded.
But "Alan tried to stop the thief" means he attempted and failed.
The examples I've critiqued are incomplete, and their incompleteness makes
them erroneous. Where are going with this?
--
Wolf Kirchmeir, Blind River ON Canada
"Nature does not deal in rewards or punishments, but only in consequences."
(Robert Ingersoll) |
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| Jacques Guy |
| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 4:30 pm |
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endipatterson@yahoo.com wrote:
Quote: I am not sure that I will necessarily have to use html as Yahoo
Pagebuilder seems to have a function that allows me to type text
around the image. For what it's worth I want to use as much typed text
as possible. I just need to know how to position the diagram
centrally, but please understand, this is my very first website.
That is why you have to learn the basics first, which you
never will relying on Pagebuilder and so on. It's quite easy,
really. As for putting the text around an image, the best
way to learn is to find a few Web pages somewhere that do that,
download them, look at the source, and figure it out.
This looks like a pretty good tutorial:
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/teachingtool/
There are probably a dozen ways of going about
building you Venn diagram page.
I would use tables... or perhaps rather an image
map of your Venn diagram so that clicking on an
area of it opens a new window displaying the
associated text. Yes, probably the easiest and
least visitor-hostile.
Quote: Did you have more luck viewing the smaller diagram?
Oh yes of course.
Quote: Are there any
mistakes in the diagram itself?
I didn't really look at it, I was more interesting
in how you came up with your first monster and how you
shrank it to this Tyrannosaur Rex. You really did it
the hard way! |
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| Jacques Guy |
| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 5:30 pm |
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Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
Quote: You can also _attach_ any image to a any message that can be e-mailed
or posted to a newsgroup.
Holy shit! He'll be welcome! What's the fellow done to you that
you should give him such advice? |
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| endipatterson@yahoo.com |
| Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 6:18 pm |
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Ron Hardin <rhhardin@mindspring.com> wrote in message news:<4012BFED.774E@mindspring.com>...
Quote: Douglas G. Kilday wrote:
Where does ``and'' in ``try and make it smaller'' come out?
Two possible mechanisms suggest themselves:
1. Conative constructions are frequently infinitival, e.g. "I'm ready to try
to pop this zit." This brings two to's too close together, encouraging
dissimilation of "to ... to" to "to ... and" by analogy with non-conative
expressions like "I'm ready to go and pop this zit." The collocation of "try
and" is then extended to non-infinitival constructions: "If you can't pop
that zit, at least try and make it smaller!"
2. Conative constructions are inherently unreal, and one way of emphasizing
them is to make them less unreal. "Try and ..." originated as an emphatic
form of "try to ...", but with erosion of emphasis through continued use, it
ended up with the same force as the original collocation.
I don't know the detailed history of this usage. Mencken says that "try and"
was denounced by Edward S. Gould in his hortatory deskbook _Good English_,
published in 1867. It is marked as "colloquial" or "informal" by the
dictionaries I have which mention it.
My own suspicion is that it's hendiadys. If you stop and think about it.
Scarcasm apart, and my file is now 501KB down from 2839KB, this use of
"and" has the effect of blurring the distinction between "try"
followed by gerunds and "try" followed by "to" and the infinitive.
From my diagram,
compare:
"Try resting a while - you might feel better then.
"Try" followed by a gerund means experiment to see what will happen.
with
"Alan tried to stop the thief."
"try" followed by "to" and the infinitive means "attempt".
We can say, "try and rest."
but we can't say, *"Alan tried and stop(ped) the thief."
However, if we use the imperative,
"Try and stop the thief!" it works although it sounds a lot less
forceful than using "to" because "to imparts purpose.
"Try and rest." on the other hand is more forceful than following
"try" with the gerund. It is an order. We could imagine a doctor
saying it to his patient.
"Try to rest." would be more forceful again. Again because "to"
imparts purpose.
The doctor would be trying to impose his control ie he is acting
deontically. I think that this may be why we find the most deontic
verbs followed by objects where the speaker is attempting to maximise
their control by attempting to exert their control on something. |
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| Andrew Woode |
| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 1:09 pm |
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endipatterson@yahoo.com (endipatterson@yahoo.com) wrote in message
Quote:
Scarcasm apart, and my file is now 501KB down from 2839KB, this use of
"and" has the effect of blurring the distinction between "try"
followed by gerunds and "try" followed by "to" and the infinitive.
We can say, "try and rest."
but we can't say, *"Alan tried and stop(ped) the thief."
However you analyse the semantics of 'to' versus 'and' (I don't think
any distinctions are valid for my own speech, but this is an area
where there seems to be some diversity), surely there is a basic
formal constraint for
the 'try and' construction; it can only be used where the bare
infinitive
form and the finite verb form happen to be identical.
Thus 'Try and do it' is acceptable, as is 'I try and do it every day'
but neither
'he tries and does it' nor 'he tried and did it' are possible.
This seems to be the fundamental reason why 'tried and stopped' is un-
acceptable with this meaning. |
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