Lay/lie

[stacer]

Okay, I have no idea about this verb. It is my Achilles heel as an editor. I cannot ever get it right. Does anyone know how I would use it in this sentence?

My writing improved and I discovered where my talents lay/lie.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

i'm pretty sure it's "lie" but I'm not looking it up under any rule there

[Brenna]

Here's one explanation:

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/lay.html

You lay down the book you've been reading, but you lie down when you go to bed. In the present tense, if the subject is acting on some other object, it's "lay"; If the subject is lying down, then it's "lie"; This distinction is often not made in informal speech, partly because in the past tense the words sound much more alike: "He lay down for a nap," but "He laid down the law." If the subject is already at rest, you might "let it lie." If a helping verb is involved, you need the past participle forms. "Lie" becomes "lain" and "lay" becomes "laid": "He had just lain down for a nap," and "His daughter had laid the gerbil on his nose."

[stacer]

I just rewrote it without the word. I couldn't figure out which one would apply.

[MsFish]

It's lie, yes?  Because it's the talents that are doing it, and the talents are doing it themselves, not to something else.  So, lie?

Man, that's going to bother me now...

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Lie (present tense) is intransitive or stative. Lay (present tense) is transitive.

If you're good at keeping track of the difference between transitive and intransitive......

[stacer]

Nope. Not a bit.  

[Mistress of Darkness]

Transitive means you are transferring the action of the verb to something else. "I lay the book on the table." Intransitive means you are performing the verbs action upon yourself.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

as in "I lie on the table, next to where i lay the books."

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

"laying in the waste of the books lying pulp."

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Intransitive means you are performing the verbs action upon yourself.

Be careful. If you slap yourself, that's still transitive. Intransitive means you yourself are performing the action, and there is no object.

And stative means there's not really an action being performed at all; just the state of being is described. "Helen lies down" would be intransitive; she's going from a standing (or sitting) position to a lying one. But "The book is lying on the floor" isn't really intransitive because there's no action involved; it's just stative. Stative verbs are often just grouped in with intransitive though, because they are "not transitive."

Of course, when you get into it linguistically, there's the whole "agent/topic" thing...

[Mistress of Darkness]

Ah. Yes, that explaination is clearer. Thanks Ookla.

[fuzzyoctopus]

Yeah, this is why I can't teach this stuff. I can give you the right answer, but explaining it?

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Give a goblin a fish...