See, the Commie is just trying to get out of posting a legitimate answer. He thinks he can slide by with insinuation and appeals to authority, without actually arguing his case. This aggression will not stand, man.
@Robusto Russia is merely expanding her borders again. She employs spies to expand on the internet as well. It stands to reason that she should try and infiltrate the noblest Q&A websites first.
@Cerberus And if I have a quote that is dated 1671, no knowledge of Middle English/Early Modern English syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and two historical and historic linguists who assume that the quote is genuine, I tend to believe the linguists, because I cannot possibly judge a quote that old by Present-day English standards.
@Cerberus And if two linguists isn't enough, there is always The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language that dates it 1671 as well (with reference to Visser) without giving it any apparent second thought or reasons against doing so.
@Vitaly I think you can, to some extent, because this is a semantic issue: if "try to" doesn't fit in the narrative or discussion or what have you of the text, that is a very strong argument, and anyone who understands the narrative etc. can judge whether it fits, to some extent.
@Vitaly: I know how it goes in the classics: often one authoritative source copies another; and, if the first one made a small formal error (like a misplaced number) or his editor, this is often never spotted by anyone, because neither the original author nor most of his readers will check the quote, unless they have special reasons to do so. I have seen numerous small errors or weak interpretations by the greatest authorities in the classics.
Easy. I knew you were going to read the paper in its entirety (judging by your earlier behavior). I knew you could read old English orthographical variants (u ←→ v, ſ ←→ s, etc). I knew you would understand them. I knew you would deem them more genuine than Milton's quote. I knew you would bring those examples up once I continue to claim that Milton's quote is genuine.
And since you are the original quoter of those examples, the duty of answering the question is now yours.
Well, since it's based on my understanding of your psychology, the reasoning is incorrect from the start (I thought you would read it all and wouldn't miss the examples. You could have missed them if they weren't in the conclusion).
@Vitaly I would have read the appropriate part if necessary: I can judge from the conclusion whether there was any chance it had more information on the origin of the construction.
@Cerberus I don't see how I could possibly lower it lower than absence of corpus data for an answer that is pretty much intended to be descriptive. :-/ Additionally, the answer isn't very well organized (it doesn't sound like a narrative, too many cross-references, and thus cannot be easily perused).
Back for a moment… Just a wild idea: Tottie Gunnel is old but she has an e-mail address. The paper mentions that she was preparing a treatment of the origin and development of try and/try to, but the paper that was “in preparation” in 2007 isn't listed anywhere I could find.
Maybe you could send her an e-mail so that she answers the question on EL&U, or something.
Back for a moment again… Actually, T. Gunnel is presenting her recent research titled “Which came first: try to or try and? Chicken and egg problem” at a conference in Oslo in early June (1–5 June to be exact). Since @Boob is allegedly in Norway, @Boob could report all the useful stuff.
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…