Try read this..../ Try to read this...? Which is correct

[semantic nuance]

Hi,

I've got a very simple question to ask. Is 'Try read this.....' pattern correct in English? If it grammatically incorrect, is it descriptively used in daily conversations? The reason I asked this was that the other day I thought about 'go/come+V2' : go see a movie, come visit us...and this 'try read this....' came to me, and I googled and found quite a lot of 'try read this....' I began wondering if this is also a pattern belonging to 'go/come+v2'. However, 'try read this...' does not sound right, I mean, from what I've learned from English grammar. Any ideas? Thanks for your help!

[onebir]

'Try TO read this' or 'try reading this' are definitely correct. In American (and increasingly UK) english 'Try AND read this' is also ok.

'Try read this' sounds wrong... i guess you found it quite a few times because so many non-native speakers use english online. And in a sense, what they use are other variants of english, so i don't think it's worth getting too hung up on this...

[kudra]

as a native Eng. speaker, "try to read this ...." sounds fine, "try read this" sounds totally wrong. Can't tell you why though. To my ear "Try and read this ...." is also possible although maybe less formal.

[roddy]

Ah, my English teaching days come flooding back. . .

Try read this is incorrect. That doesn't mean you won't find it on the Internet though.

Technically, the difference between 'try to do' and 'try doing' is . . .

Try to do = attempt to do something. You may or not be successful.

Try doing = do something (which you are sure you can do) which may or may not have the desired result.

ie.

This window's stuck. Can you try to open it for me.

I can't figure out how it works. I'll try reading the instructions again.

Not sure anybody outside of a grammar book would care though . . .

[HashiriKata]

1. Try to do something (some effort involved)

2. Try doing something ( to see / to find out what it's like)

3. Try & do something (similar to 2 above)

4. Try do something (wrong, but it could be intended as 3 with "and" missing)

Speaking as a non-native speaker of English, I can imagine I commit the mistake as in 4 quite easily on a subconscious level. Thinking of the pattern 试试看 or 试看看 (without either inflection or "and" needed)，I can predict that many Chinese would also commit the mistake in English quite easily when they don't have time to think about it.

[anonymoose]

semantic nuance,

"try read this" sounds wrong, but then "go see a movie" also doesn't sound very natural to me as a British English speaker. I think that "go see a movie" is more American style, whereas I'd say "go and see a movie". As Kudra says "try read this" sounds wrong to her, I guess it isn't acceptable in American English either.

Roddy,

Technically, the difference between 'try to do' and 'try doing' is . . .

Try to do = attempt to do something. You may or not be successful.

Try doing = do something (which you are sure you can do) which may or may not have the desired result.

ie.

This window's stuck. Can you try to open it for me.

I can't figure out how it works. I'll try reading the instructions again.

I don't know what formal grammar has to say about this, but I'm not convinced by your differentiation here. Having briefly considered your two examples, I have just come up with my own theory:

Try to do something places the emphasis on the verb (do) only. Thus, in the example

This window's stuck. Can you try to open it for me.

the emphasis is on open only, and the result of trying is that the opening will either be successful or unsuccessful, ie. you will either be able to open the window or you will be unable to open the window.

Try doing something places the emphasis not just on the verb but the whole verb object phrase (doing something). Thus, in the example

I can't figure out how it works. I'll try reading the instructions again.

the emphasis is on the whole concept of reading the instructions, and not just the reading. Here, the result of trying is that the reading the instructions will either be successful or unsuccessful, ie. you will either be able to figure out how it works or you will be unable to figure out how it works.

OK, so my analysis sounds very boring so far. But if we switch the constructions in your two examples so we have

This window's stuck. Can you try opening it for me.

and

I can't figure out how it works. I'll try to read the instructions again.

If we consider the first one, as per my theory outlined above, the emphasis here is not only on opening but on the whole verb object phrase opening it. Here as before, the result of trying is that the opening it will either be successful or unsuccessful, ie. you will either be able to open the window or you will be unable to open the window, just as before. So in this example, both of the try to do and try doing structures are acceptable.

However, if we look at the second example now, as per my theory, the emphasis here is only on the verb reading and not the whole phrase reading the instructions. Now the result of trying is that the reading will either be successful or unsuccessful, ie. you will either be able to read or you will be unable to read. This is obviously different from the example in its original form as you gave it. So in this example, only the try doing structure is acceptable.

As I said, this is just a theory I came up with, and it may be wrong. Perhaps someone else would like to comment, or come up with a counter example to invalidate my theory.

[kudra]

As Laurie Anderson said, "Oh boy, right again."

http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/0290.html

http://www.bartleby.com/68/56/6156.html

Instead of just googling for a phrase, you can try to find it by going here

http://www.bartleby.com/141/

and typing it in. Search All English Usage.

[semantic nuance]

Thank you everyone for clarifying this for me.