"Lay" vs. "Lie"
When it comes to the inscrutably arbitrary intricacies of the English language (any major variant), I am quite pleased with myself that I somehow managed to memorize the differences between the verb spelled "lay" versus the verb spelled "lie" many years ago. However, my dirty little secret is that I am hopeless at any sort of conjugation of said verbs and tend to construct my sentences so that I only use the simplest forms.
Well, no more. I feel like empowering myself! I am grateful to Geoffrey K. Pullum at Language Log ("Be appalled; be very appalled") for putting this very useful information in front of me:
- lay = {lay, lays, laid, laying, laid} is the transitive verb meaning "deposit, or cause to recline";
- lie1 = {lie, lies, lay, lying, lain} is the intransitive verb meaning "recline"; and
- lie2 = {lie, lies, lied, lying, lied} is an additional confound, an unrelated intransitive verb meaning "tell a deliberate untruth under conditions where truth was expected"
Here are those same forms in a table:
lie
"fib"
(intransitive)lie
"recline"
(intransitive)lay
"deposit"
(transitive)plain form / plain present tense lie lie lay 3rd person singular present tense lies lies lays preterite (simple past) tense lied lay laid gerund-participle lying lying laying past participle lied lain laid
Now, Mr. Pullum is rightly appalled at the chaos apparent in the table above — a situation clearly not directed at ease of use or learning, for that matter — but there you go. Perhaps someday we can all get behind new verbs and new verb-forms to replace this hopeless muddle, but until that happy time we must try to press ahead and conjugate uneasily but correctly. Unfortunately, these verbs crop up too frequently in writing to avoid their use altogether.
After I finish with these, I think I will move on to trying to figure out "awaken".