What’s the us(ag)e?
as Shakespeare’s Desdemona says, “Can anything be made of this?”
If you are the kind of person who enjoys food with some complexity (rich, full flavored soup, for instance, with strong spices, strong cheese, bread with a pinch of some herbs baked in and topped with extra virgin olive oil, a good merlot) rather than food that is bland and simple (fast food, canned soup, processed cheese etc.), then you just have to love the English language. And you should also understand why English is such a difficult language for non-native speakers to learn and speak well (and why it is difficult for native speakers to learn to write well).
From the preceding lesson on homophones, homonyms, and words pronounced in ways that make them seem like homophones, we get some confusion, mis-use of common words, and perhaps some frustration, wishing that English was a language that had a more one-to-one correspondence between a word and what it stands for, its meaning. Philosophers, especially those with a mathematical background, often express such frustration with the English language. Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica is the most famous example of the attempt to rid a language of all ambiguity. But such attempts result in failure because they end up with a language that is logically consistent but too divorced from human affairs, from the life that inheres in the language. The English language is confusing because life is confusing.
Language expresses multiple meanings because life expresses multiple meanings. Literalism is the enemy of life, whether it is a literal interpretation of the Bible or a literal interpretation of nearly any real life use of language. And understanding, and accepting, this inherent quality of our language makes our life more interesting, adds some confusion but also adds more fun. And one of the word confusions that illustrate the fun of language is the pair: lie and lay. (And fun, as it often is, is connected with sex.)
Here is an illustration from Shakespeare’s Othello.
Desdemona: Do you know, sirrah, where the Lieutenant Cassio lies?
Clown: I dare not say he lies anywhere.
Des: Why man?
Clown: He’s a soldier; and for one to say a soldier lies is stabbing.
Des: Go to. Where lodges he?
Clown. To tell you where he lodges is to tell you where I lie.
Des: Can anything be made of this?
Clown: I know not where he lodges; and for me to devise a lodging, and say he lies here or he lies there, were to lie in mine own throat.
From Othello, Act III, Sc. IV
Here the play of language is around the ambiguity of the Clown’s statements dealing with the word “lie” as a false statement and the word “lie” as “residing, or lodging.” Such confusion provides for some humor. The Clown is obviously trying to confuse the two meanings, and Desdemona expresses some frustration about this playing around with language, asking, “Can anything be made of this?”
A mathematically inclined philosopher might say, “Of course we can make something of this. All we have to do is change the language such that we have two words to express two different meanings. We will then never confuse the two meanings of ‘lie’ since we will give one of those meanings a new word to associate with it.” But this would never satisfy the poet or the dramatist (or anyone else who loves complex pleasures. See above about soup, bread, and wine).
What Shakespeare does with this “lie” / “lie” confusion is to not only provide some humor with the confusion of the falsehood “lie” and the lodging “lie,” he also prefigures another more serious confusion of “lies” that are at the heart of the play. In Desdemona’s conversation with the clown, we have a confusion and a connection of telling falsehoods with lodging, sleeping. This is humorous. But the next “lie” confusion is anything but; it is what makes this play a tragedy instead of a comedy. For Desdemona is to be killed by her husband Othello because of his inability to rid himself of the confusion and connection of the lies told to him by Iago about his wife lying (telling a lie) about her lying (in bed) with Cassio.
From Othello, Act IV, Sc. I
Iago: faith, that he [Cassio] did—I know not what he did.
Othello: What? what?
Iago: Lie—
Othelllo: With her? [Desdemona]
Iago: With her, on her; what you will.
Othello: Lie with her? lie on her?—We say lie on her when they belie her.—Lie with her! Zounds, that’s fulsome….
So, are we better off with or without this confusion of lie meaning “recline” and lie meaning to tell a falsehood? You might wonder what about the other confusion, the one with “lie” and “lay”? That’s the one that causes more problems, though not as interesting as “lie” and sex.
Like most language problems, the solution is quite simple. That’s not true. The solution appears to be simple. The problems are rooted in our history, and human history is anything but simple. Let’s look at the verbs involved.
Here is a simple conjugation of the verb lay. (Wait a minute! How simple can it be when another meaning of “conjugation” is “pertaining to marriage, connubial”?)
Present: The mother lays the child in the crib.
Past: The mother laid the child in the crib last night.
Past participle: The mother has laid her burden down.
Here is the same with the verb lie.
Present: The baby lies asleep, finally.
Past: The baby lays asleep even with all the noise from the party.
Past participle: The baby has lain asleep for ten hours.
The fact that the present tense of “lay” is the same as the past tense of “lie” is confusing. We, ourselves, lie down, but we lay something down. To lie is to recline; to lay is to put or place something. But since the present tense of lay is “lays,’ and this is the same spelling and sound of the past tense of lie, we get easily confused. But being confused about “lie” and “lay” is better (Ask Desdemona, if that were possible) than being confused about “lie” and “lie.”
What, then, is to be done? Here is a quote from my old high school grammar book, Warriner’s Handbook of English, Book Two:
If you do not habitually use these verbs correctly, you must begin your work on them slowly and thoughtfully. Only by taking time to think through each form you use can you eventually establish the habit of using the verbs correctly. When faced with a lie—lay problem, ask yourself two questions: 1. What is the meaning I intend? Is it to be in a lying position, or is it to put something down? [Warriner doesn’t mention putting someone down. That expression illustrates another type of complexity to language, slang (which is rich in metaphor).]
2. What is the time expressed by the verb? Which principal part is required to express this time?
Example:
Problem: After the alarm had awakened me, I (lay, laid) in bed too long.
Questions 1 Meaning? The meaning here is to remain in a lying position. The verb which means to remain in a lying position is lie.
Question 2 Time The time is past, and requires the past form, which is lay.
Most of us (any of us?) will not go to this much bother. And Warriner’s style is one of the reasons why so many students did not like studying English grammar in high school. And now we basically have almost no study of English grammar in any of our schools (or so I’ve been told). But is it possible to speak about a subject without a vocabulary? The student of chemistry cannot learn anything about the subject without knowing the terms of the discipline: acid, base, ph, etc. How can we expect a student of our language (and are we not all students of our language?) to learn without knowing the terminology? Without knowing the language, can we have s good exchange of ideas and information, in short, good intercourse?
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