It’s always helpful in these conversations if people indicate their native dialect, and be clear on whether they are providing the “raw data” on usage in their dialect, or attempting to analyze usage. I find some of the contributions to this thread confusing in that regard.
Native midwest american speaker and while I would never use it naturally myself, I’ve heard it loads of times from british speakers on podcasts and youtube videos. I understand it as simply meaning “I was sitting there”. Searching for “was sat” on twitter seems to bear this meaning out.
From the first couple results:
“Harriet just got out of the pool and came to me to see if I was ok because I was sat on my own and the parents are talking to other people.”
“Could see Johnston fearing the reaction when he was sat on the pitch.”
“Was sat with some our coaches last night watching the sessions contemplating the impact our club has made on the local area”
“Guys she was sat minding her business and he troubled her peace… he IS obsessed #loveisland”
There’s a little discussion of the “was sat” usage at this language blog:
https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2006/07/having-chinese.html
A British commenter claims that these forms are standard in northern England but are sometimes viewed as nonstandard in southern England (like they are in America). Any UKers here agree with that?
I grew up in London in the '70s and '80s, and this was normal usage for me, slightly informal register. So if it originated in the north, it was earlier than that.
I don’t agree with his analysis that the difference is focus on posture vs location, that doesn’t hold up from the examples cited in this thread. It can sometimes just be an alternative that’s completely synonymous with usual present participle. But it tends to be used in particular in setting a scene where something somewhat unexpected or incongruous occurs.
Elsewhere on that blog it’s said by the blog author, a linguist, that “lie” (as in lie down) is a third word along with “sit” and “stand” that can take this construction, and cites a piece of fiction (actually Middle-Earth slash fiction, apparently a sex scene involving Legolas!)
which in standard syntax would be “He was lying on the bed”. Some British commenters said this doesn’t sound grammatical to them.
If we’re still talking about UK usage I would say no. If somebody was lain there I would assume he was unconscious/dead and somebody else put him there. It’s possible this may be a local regionalism somewhere, but I haven’t heard it.
The third one is clearly wrong since ran is the preterite. Try "I was run there "and I find it barely acceptable. What has happened is that the verb is being used causatively. I also find the second acceptable if marginally so, again causatively. The first and fourth are unacceptable to me, but how about “I was looked for there”?
[Moderating]
This doesn’t appear to be about art. The rules of grammar may be complicated and difficult, but it looks to me like this is still a factual question. Off to GQ.
I wouldn’t know what to make of “I was lain there.” If someone else had put me there, I would have said “I was laid there.”
WHICH “this”? The usage in the first, longer quote, or the usage in the second, shorter quote using quotation marks?
Just to confuse you, you might hear both used together for emphasis “I was sat sitting [stood standing] there”, but usually as setting the context for the more significant point (as it might be, “for half an hour and you never turned up”, or “why didn’t you see me”).
Offhand, I don’t think this is used with other verbs, certainly not of motion - it seems to be only concerned with a static position of some sort. And the whole “lie/lay/lain/laid” confusion is yet another can of worms.
I have never heard or heard of this usage before this thread. (Lifelong Southern Ontario Canadian dialect user here.) It is confusing* me. It sounds like a passive construction, like the OP had been seated there by someone else, not that they had been sitting there of their own volition.
In somewhat the same way as the ambiguous time expression “a quarter of three” does. Is that “quarter to three” or “quarter after three”?
The verb ‘to sit’ can be either intransitive or transitive. In the normal meaning of ‘I was sat there’ the verb is transitive (thought this may be slightly hidden by the passive voice) and ‘sat’ is a participle. In the British dialect usage would ‘was sat’ be an ordinary passive voice verb? Or would ‘sat’ be parsed as an ordinary adjective?
But in either case, I think the participle form of ‘to sit’ would be used.
I’d think ‘sat’ to be the participle form in any case. It is not the simple past.
Or am I wrong?
"I was sat here in the restaurant to wait. I was given a menu to ponder and was sunk in thought studying it"Surely ‘sank’ wouldn’t be substituted for ‘sunk.’ Right? (‘Gave’ couldn’t be substituted for ‘given’ since that clause is clearly passive voice.)
Sorry, the long quote with “lain” is the one that was found ungrammatical.
The trouble with that is that Mrs S is a character who is acting above her class. She is basically ‘working class’ but tries to be ‘posh’. This is a common trope in English comedy. cf Hyacinth Bucket, who insists that her name is pronounced Bouquet.
In that example, Mrs S was slipping up and reverting to her class roots, rather.
I think this use of sat/stood probably is best understood as a sort of adjective.
Perhaps the following citation is helpful:
Everyone remember The Ballad of Davy Crockett by Sons of the Pioneers, 1955? (“Killed himself a b’ar when he was only three”)
The B-side of that record was “The Graveyard Filler of the West” in which the singer describes being thrown from an ornery hoss with these words:
“Vulgar and uneducated”? I think it is simply another indicator showing that the level of education of the general public has been declining at a troublesome rate.
It is reminiscent of Rome when, in its jaded and declining years, what was called “Vulgar Latin” came into use. It was referred to as “sermo vulgaris”, or “common speech”.
The only thing that’s vulgar and uneducated is your bizarre parochial notion that the only valid form of language is that of your own particular time and place, and that any deviation from that must be attributable to “level of education”. Do you regard people who speak a completely different language such as Japanese as “vulgar and uneducated”? If not, then why would you make such an offensive claim about people who speak a slightly different language, i.e. a different dialect of English?
It’s not a different dialect. It’s poor English.