This is the first time I dare post and I’m afraid I have a stupid question:
I am appealing to the grammarians out there for help. I’ve looked around on the web and consulted a few books, but can’t figure out which sentence is correct: “What does one do when a problem lies with the basic construction of the piece?” or “What does one do when a problem lay with the basic construction of the piece?”.
I suspect the correct word is “lies”, but I’m not 100% sure, and can’t figure out any way to know. Can anyone help me and explain why the correct answer is correct?
To lie is used when you’re lying down, say, for a nap. Simple past tense is “lay” or (sometimes) “lied.” It’s an intransitive verb.
To lay is used when you’re, say, laying a sheet of paper down on the table. Simple past tense is “laid.” It’s a transitive verb, so it has to have an object.
As Oy! says, in this case it’s “lies” because it’s both intransitive and present tense. It’s intransitive because it uses a preposition before its object (“lies with”)
Wow, I totally misunderstood the thread title. I thought you were asking if you should have sex with someone, or lie to them in order to avoid it. Seriously.
Both can be correct, depending on the nuance of what you want to say.
A piece was constructed. The construction had flaws and something bad resulted. What does one do when a problem lay with the basic construction of the piece? Very little, because what happened was in the past. Just deal with the consequences of the flaws.
A piece is being constructed. The construction has flaws and something bad may result. What does one do when a problem lies with the basic construction of the piece? Why, fix the flaws, of course.
Someone or something lies (when not prevaricating) when it is resting in a place without moving, or is placing itself into such a resting state – it is a description of what the subject is doing. (And of course the past tense of lie with this meaning is lay.) I lie down to sleep, the paper lies on the desk, let sleeping dogs lie.
Someone or something lays something else somewhere. (The something else then lies there.) I lay the book on the table, the pallbearers lay the coffin in the grave. The successful lover will lay his girl, i.e., he will lay her down and make love to her. Poetic or dialectal usage will use “to lay oneself” for “to lie”; for bonnie Annie Laurie, the singer will lay him(self) doon and dee.
Chief Pedant has the answer which specifically answers the OP’s question.
Polycarp, you are confusing the present tenses of two different verbs – lie and lay with the present and past tenses of the verb lie – lie and lay. It is the second grouping of lie and lay that are used in the example given in the OP.
The difference in the two questions is tense, not a matter of whether an object is being placed or not.
Of course, Chief Pedant explained this much more clearly in his post, but I thought I would add to the confusion.
The it that **Oy! **referred to is a question, and you quoted **Oy! **. You said “it”, the antecedent of which is the question. Yes, the question contains the clause, but so what?
So the fact that the sentence as a whole is a question has nothing to do with the OP’s concern, namely, the purely semantic (not grammatical) issue of whether to use lie or lay. The verb choice which OP faces is embedded in the subordinated clause, not the main (question) clause. OP would face the same choice if the whole sentence were something like this:
*One does not know what to do when a problem lies/lays with the basic construction of the piece.
*
No question, same problem.