Teaching Tip
A few teachers try to solve the “lay/lie” problem by providing students with a
memory aid: “Dogs lay down, but people lie down.” This memory aid, of
course, is wrong—the verb in both cases should be “lie.” Some people argue
that the intransitive use of “lay” has become so ubiquitous that it now is stan-
dard. This argument, however, fails to account for the fact that many people in
influential positions continue to follow standard usage and judge the
nonstandard usage negatively. Being able to apply the difference between
“lay” and “lie” therefore has clear advantages because the intransitive “lay” is
inappropriate in most situations, and it always is inappropriate in writing. Many
teachers, for example, cringe whenever they see a student using “lay” intran-
sitively, even though this usage has become so common that they cringe daily.
The incorrect usage is ingrained in students’ language patterns, making the
task of shifting their usage to Standard English difficult. An effective activity in-
volves teaching students the difference between “lie” and “lay” and then ask-
ing them, in teams, to listen to conversations in the cafeteria, the bus, on TV,
and so on. Have them record every instance of incorrect and correct usage
and then present an oral report on their findings. What was the frequency of in-
correct and correct usage? Did usage differ in any way—by gender? age? so-
cioeconomic status?Incomplete Transitive and Incomplete Intransitive Verbs
A transitive verb requires a noun phrase to complete the predicate, but an in-
transitive verb does not. A subclass of transitive and intransitive verbs, how-
ever, requires another kind of construction to be complete. These special verbs
are calledincomplete transitivesandincomplete intransitives,respectively.
They require an additional element, aprepositional phrase,which is discussed
in detail on pages 89 to 92. For example, consider the verbsputanddeal,as il-
lustrated in these sentences:
- Mrs. DiMarco put the rent moneyunder her mattress.
- Buggsy dealtwith the problem.
These sentences would be incomplete without the italicized constructions.
Note that sometimes these verbs are calledprepositional verbs.
Ditransitive Verbs: Direct and Indirect Objects
On pages 72 to 73, we saw that transitive verbs require an object. A special cate-
gory of verbs, calledditransitives,usually appears withtwo objects;that is, the
verb is followed by two noun phrases, as illustrated in sentences 40 and 41:
74 CHAPTER 3