0

The context is

"The mercenaries lie/lay dead."

"The animal lies/lays dead."

It's present tense and there's a corpse involved.

I've looked it up elsewhere and I just don't understand the rules. Something about an object? Is a corpse an object?

Community
  • 1
TimSim
  • 103
  • There's a comprehensive answer at http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/105/what-is-the-difference-between-lay-and-lie. But it's genuinely confusing, and native speakers often get it wrong. In particular, although the expression "Lay down and die" is incorrect, it's used so commonly (as a metaphor for giving up completely) that it's arguably become acceptable as a stock phrase. – Morton Jun 14 '15 at 12:00
  • Lie is am intransitive bverb, so it can't have an object. There he lies, dead as a doornail. Lay is the transitive causative form of lie; i.e, lay means 'cause to lie', so it can have an object. We will lay him there, in the crypt. That's the simple part. The complicated part is that to lie is an irregular verb, whereas to lay is regular. Result: the past tense of lay is laid (We laid him there), but the past tense of lie is also pronounced (and spelled) lay (There he lay). Word-form details here. – John Lawler Jun 14 '15 at 15:34
  • Sorry, didn't understand any of that. I can look up the grammatical explanations and they all sound very comprehensive, but I'm stupid so I had to ask for the correct answer. Transitive causative is just gobbledygook to me. – TimSim Jun 14 '15 at 23:26

1 Answers1

1

Simple enough, once you understand it. Not too simple if you don't.

To begin with, the answer:

If it is really the present tense, you must use lie(s).

Here are some of the difficulties:

  1. This type of sentence is rarely used in the simple present. The simple present tense is only used when something is always, or habitually, so. But mercenaries always lying dead is not a likely scenario. This type of sentence requires the simple past if it already happened, in which case the verb is lay(s), or if it's happening now, the present continuous, in which case the verb is is/are lying.

  2. There are three verbs with overlapping forms that confuse people: to lay, which means to put something down something, to lie, usually used with down after it, which means to assume a horizontal position, such as we do on a bed, and also a second verb to lie, which means to tell a falsehood. To make things worse, the past of to lay is laid, which is a word that is avoided by some people because it may be used as a somewhat vulgar slang term for having sex with someone. The past of lie (down) is lay (down), and the past of the other lie is simply lied.

  3. You're confusing an everyday object with a grammatical object. An everyday object is just a thing...a pen, a hamburger, a hand. A grammatical object is something that receives the action of the verb, and usually follows it. It may be a thing or a person. Yo use the verb lay, we need a grammatical object, but it can be a thing or a person: "I laid my pen down". "I laid the baby down to sleep". Notice that if I myself did the same thing, there is no object in the sentence, and I'd say "I lay down, but I'd be using the verb to lie down in the past, not the verb to lay.

Steven Littman
  • 5,028
  • It's from a game. There is the battle sequence, and immediately after the beginning of the description of the aftermath. "The animal is lying dead" just sounds wrong somehow, but it is in the present. 2. I'm not sure because it's a corpse. A corpse can't lie down. It has been struck down and now it lies/lays/is laying dead, but is laying/is lying just sounds wrong to me. I don't know. – TimSim Jun 14 '15 at 23:24
  • Lie is intransitive. That means no object. The animal is just lying there. It's true that corpses cannot lie down (which implies movement from one position to another), but they can be lying dead. – Steven Littman Jun 15 '15 at 01:49