In general,
irregular verbs are troublesome to learn. Regular verbs create their
past and past participle forms by adding “d” or “ed” to the stem of
their infinitives (love, loved, loved), but irregular verbs create past
and past participle forms by altering their stems in unpredictable ways.
A number of common irregular verbs give people trouble, particularly:
dive, drown, fly, hang, lead, prove, sit, set and shrink.
But lie and lay seem to give people more difficulty than do all the other irregular verbs combined. Here's why: The past tense form of lie is lay, so it's indistinguishable from lay
in the present tense except in usage. (Sit and set, probably the
irregular verbs that give people the most trouble next to lie and lay,
for example, have no parts in common. It's sit, sat and sat but set,
set, set.)
The principal parts (most-common verb forms) of lie are:
lie (present,) lay (past) and lain (past participle).
The principal parts of lay are:
lay (present), laid (past) and laid (past participle).
As an aid in choosing the correct verb forms, remember that lie means to recline, whereas lay means to place something, to put something on something.
• Lie
means that the actor (subject) is doing something to himself or
herself. It's what grammarians call a complete verb. When accompanied by
subjects, complete verbs tell the whole story.
• Lay, on the other hand, means
that the subject is acting on something or someone else; therefore, it
requires a complement to make sense. Thus lay always takes a direct
object. Lie never does.
More on “lie”: In its simplest
(command) form, when the you is implied, lie is a sentence all by
itself. If you tell your dog, “Lie,” as in “(You) lie (down),” that's a
complete sentence. (The same is true, by the way, of sit.) In written
material, we generally use down with lie when we mean to recline not
because down is needed grammatically but because we wish to distinguish
from the regular verb lie, meaning to tell an untruth (as in lie, lied,
lied).
Tip: Always remember that lay is a transitive verb and requires a direct object.
(A transitive verb acts as a conveyor belt, transmitting action or
influence from the subject to the object.) The common saying, “Let's lay
out in the sun,” is not only incorrect grammatically, it suggests a
public promiscuity that's frowned on even in this age of sexual
permissiveness because you're implying the existence of a direct object
of lay: “Let's lay (her/him?) out in the sun.” Not that there's anything
wrong with THAT! It's just ungrammatical unless you're talking about
sex.
Correct Usage:
Lie
Present tense: I lie down on my bed to rest my weary bones.
Past tense: Yesterday, I lay there thinking about what I had to do during the day.
Past participle: But I remembered that I had lain there all morning one day last week.
Lay
Present tense: As I walk past, I lay the tools on the workbench.
Past tense: As I walked past, I laid the tools on the workbench. And: I laid an egg in class when I tried to tell that joke.
Past participle: . . . I had laid the tools on the workbench.
AN IMPORTANT TIP:
Here's an easy way to get it right — every time — without remembering all that gobbleygook above.
When you bump into a lie-lay conundrum — when you aren't absolutely, 110 percent sure — do this quick little exercise.*
Write these six words — “lie, lay, lain” (to recline); then beside
or below them — “lay, laid, laid” (to place or put down).
When students do that (I see it on the sides of their quizzes), they never — underline “never”— get it wrong.
Simple, but it works. I call it the Michiko Sato rule.
The Michiko Sato Rule
I call this “The
Michiko Sato Rule” because she invented that quick little way to make
sure she always got it right in quizzes and exercises (and life).
When Michiko, who is now married and a mother living in Tokyo, was a
student here, she would always write six words — three atop the other
three — on her quizzes and exercises (we did 'em on paper then).
| Lie |
Lay |
Lain |
| Lay |
Laid |
Laid |
And she never got 'em wrong. Never!
I, therefore, being the smart guy that I am, developed the theory
that if it worked for a student whose first language was Japanese, it
would work for everyone. Give it a try.
Answer to “Zits” question: Oh, it should be “lie” as in “recline”; otherwise, he'd be putting “low” somewhere or %@#&-ing it. |
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