Lie and lay

Is it lie or lay, lying or laying, lay or laid, or lain?

Those pairs often cause confusion. People sometimes use lay when they meant laid, or lying when it should be laying. For concreteness, here are some examples to illustrate:

(1) He laid on the sofa all morning.
(2) Laying on the table, the cat soon fell asleep.
(3) After a while, we lie down and rest.
(4) That hen has just lain an egg.

Can you spot the ones that are wrong?

As a student, I had this little chart that I referred to whenever I was in doubt. It isn't as neat as the one below, but it had served me well.

Base form	Meaning	Past tense	Present participle	Past participle
Lie	To recline	lay	lying	lain
Lie	To tell an untruth	lied	lying	lied
lay	To put or place	laid	laying	laid
lay	To produce eggs	laid	laying	laid

There are a number of things to note from the table. Firstly, the conjugated form lain is used only as the past participle of the verb to lie (to recline). This is a useful fact to remember, to help narrow the choices in troublesome cases.

Secondly, both the present participles of lie are the same form lying, but their past tense and past participle forms differ. Specifically, lay is orthographically different from lied, and lain from lied.

Lastly, and this is arguably the one causing the most confusion, the past tense of to lie (to recline) - lay - is spelt the same way as the present tense of to lay.

Let's go through each of the four sentences above.

(1) He laid on the sofa all morning.

Looking at the table, laid is the past tense and the past participle of lay for both to put or place, and to produce eggs, neither of which is suitable. The correct word is lay, the past tense of to lie (to recline).

Correction: He lay on the sofa all morning.

(2) Laying on the table, the cat soon fell asleep.

Laying is wrong because the intended meaning is to be on a horizontal position. The correct word is lying, the present participle of to lie.

Correction: Lying on the table, the cat soon fell asleep.

(3) After a while, we lie down and rest.

Lie is correct because the intended meaning is to recline and rest.

(4) The hen has just lain an egg. If we remember lain as the only past participle of the verb to lie (to recline), we can rule this as wrong. The correct past participle is laid.

Correction: The hen has just laid an egg.

Welcome or welcomed?

The past participle welcomed is sometimes wrongly used as an adjective, such as in the sentences below:

(1) *You're welcomed to join us tomorrow.
(2) *She didn't feel welcomed at the party.

In both sentences, the correct word is the adjective welcome:

(3) You're welcome to join us tomorrow.
(4) She didn't feel welcome at the party.

The word welcomed should only be used as a verb:

(5) They welcomed the visitors warmly.
(6) The guests were welcomed at the gate by the children.

Details...were

AsisaOne -17  June 2012

There are two mistakes in that sentence alone, both relating to subject-verb agreement. The two instances of was should have been were, since the head noun details is plural and the conjoined noun phrase "he and the entire NKF board" is also plural.

It seems there's a greater tendency for agreement errors of this kind in online news. Here's another one from ChannelNewAsia:

ChannelNewsAsia - 9 July 2012

The correct verb is continues, as the noun penalty is singular.

And a rare one from BBC:

BBC - 9 July 2012

The head noun is results, so the correct auxiliary verb is have.

Because or because of?

Both because and because of can be used as adverbials of reason. For example:

(1) She cried because she was in pain.
(2) She cried because of pain.

Consequently, a common error is to use because of in the same way as because:

(3) *He missed school because of he was ill.

Sentence (3) is unacceptable because "he was ill" is a clause, but because of is a preposition and should be followed by a noun phrase:

(4) He missed school because of illness.
(5) The flight was delighted because of a storm.

Notice that both illness and a storm are noun phrases.

The word because, on the other hand, is a conjunction. It connects two independent clauses:

(6) He missed school because he was ill
(7) The flight was delayed because there was a storm.

In (6) for example, "He missed school" is a clause (the main clause) and "he was ill" is another clause. The conjunction because joins these two clauses.

If we try to replace because of in (5) with because, the result is also ungrammaticality:

(8) *The flight was delayed because a storm.