Lie lay

Anonymous

Yoong Liat

 

I lie in bed. (present tense)
I lay myself in bed. (present tense)  -- 'lay' is the past, not present tense. I believe it is a careless mistake.

 

Were lay the past form of lie, it would be intransitive; as such, it couldn't be followed by a direct object (myself).

Therefore, lay in 'I lay myself in bed' is the present tense of lay, laid, laid -- although the use of lay as a reflexive verb sounds a bit odd to my ears.

I suggest reading again CalifJim's post. 

CJ wrote:  I lay in bed yesterday when I was feeling sick. (past - action or state)

Please note that the past tense of  lie is lay. (lie, lay, lain).

Hi Mr Liat,

Yoong Liat

Please note that the past tense of  lie is lay. (lie, lay, lain).

I know. In reply to the following post

julielai

I lie in bed. (present tense)
I lay myself in bed. (present tense)
Right??

CalifJim wrote

CalifJim

I believe we'd have to say yes! "myself" becomes the direct object, so "lay" is used. The reflexive use is not so common, however, as other uses ...

I said earlier that the presence of "myself" in "I lay myself in bed" makes the verb transitive. Hence, "lay" here is the present tense of lay (laid, laid) and NOT the past of lie (lay, lain) because the latter is intransitive and cannot take any direct object. I also repeated what CalifJim had already written, that is that lay (and I mean lay, laid, laid) is generally not used as a reflexive verb. 

If you take "myself" out, then it obviously becomes a past tense (lie, lay, lain is intransitive), but that's another story. 

Just to sum things up:

• "I lie in bed": present simple, intransitive (lie, lay, lain)
• "I lay in bed": past simple, intransitive (lie, lay, lain)
• "I lay myself in bed": present simple, transitive (lay, laid, laid) (as I said, this sounds a bit odd to me, but I don't see why one should say it's ungrammatical).