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Mar. 2nd, 2007
Picking up an old thread about tenses
Mar. 2nd, 2007 09:48 amA while ago, I was yammering here about lay and lie and the misuse thereof. At some point in the comment thread, someone said that the lyrics to Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars has a lay/lie error in the chorus ("If I lay here/If I just lay here/Would you lie with me and just forget the world?").
Because my brain is a very odd place, I've been pondering this on and off since. And I'm not convinced that there is a lay/lie error there, because none of the following are considered incorrect, at least in informal writing:
-- If I ate here, would you join me for dinner?
-- If I sat here, would you sit next to me?
-- If I lived here, I'd be home now.
Yes, an argument could be made that the verbs above should all be present, not past, tense, but I don't think that the past is out-and-out wrong.
So, there you have it. I'm going to stand up, at least somewhat, for the usage "If I lay here, would you lie with me?"
Because my brain is a very odd place, I've been pondering this on and off since. And I'm not convinced that there is a lay/lie error there, because none of the following are considered incorrect, at least in informal writing:
-- If I ate here, would you join me for dinner?
-- If I sat here, would you sit next to me?
-- If I lived here, I'd be home now.
Yes, an argument could be made that the verbs above should all be present, not past, tense, but I don't think that the past is out-and-out wrong.
So, there you have it. I'm going to stand up, at least somewhat, for the usage "If I lay here, would you lie with me?"
