Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

We've all recited that prayer a time or three, haven't we? Especially when we were kiddos. Too bad we didn't pray for understanding about the difference between lay and lie!

The sentence, now I lay me down to sleep is grammatically correct. So is the sentence, now I lie down to sleep. Notice the difference, other than the fact that one sounds more poetic than the other?

Lay needs a direct object. In the classic child's prayer, the direct object is me. You have to lay something or someone (okay, let's all get our prurient snickering out of the way right now!). If you were to say, now I lay down to sleep, you'd be wro-o-o-o-o-o-ng-g-g-g!

Now I lie down to sleep, as I said, is correct. Lie doesn't take a direct object (a direct object is a noun or a pronoun, and down is an adverb telling us where we're going to lie, isn't it?). I wouldn't lie me down to sleep, now would I?

Well, no, I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to embarass myself.

The same rule applies for sit and set. I sit down is correct. I set down is not. On the other hand, I set the cup down is correct, because I'm setting something down (the cup! the cup!).

By the way, lie, sit, and set are irregular verbs. We call them that, not to give them an inferiority complex, as they so richly deserve, but because they don't follow the usual rule when we use them in the past tense: we don't add a "d" or "ed" at the end of them, as we do with most verbs. So the past tense of sit is sat, not sitted. And the past tense of lie is...lay. Yesterday, I lay down to sleep is correct, because it's the past tense of lie, not the present tense of lay. Maddening, huh? That's part of the beauty of the English language---breathtakingly complex and a royal pain in the patoot.

In a Subjunctive Mood

What's subjunctive? What's mood, grammatically speaking? And why isn't there a suprajunctive mood?

I don't know the answer to that last question, but if you do, gitcher own blog!

Mood is a property of verbs. The verbs we use most often are in the indicative mood, i.e., they state a fact (in the mind of the speaker, anyway): I went for a walk. She is the teacher. The italicized verbs in those sentences indicate that I went for a walk and she is the teacher. But what if I hadn't, and she wasn't, but we'd like to think about the possibilities?

If she was the teacher, I'd study harder. bz-z-z-z-z! Wrong-g-g-g-g!

The word if tells us that we're about to hear something that's contrary to an actual fact. Obviously, she isn't the teacher, right? So we can't use the indicative mood, because we're not talking about facts, right? So....

If she were the teacher, I'd study harder. <-----exactamundo!
Were is in the subjunctive mood. Ordinarily, we think of "were" as a past tense form of the infinitive "to be", but obviously, that isn't the case here, because the word if tells us that we're not dealing with reality (and for some of us, this is an ongoing problem). When we're not dealing with reality, but a possibility, we need a subjunctive form of the verb. Unfortunately, the Official Verb Makers ran out of ideas, so were functions either as past tense or as subjunctive mood, depending on which task it's performing.

Hey, are you still reading this?

On the other hand, we're fortunate that our Verb Makers didn't get too fancy-schmancy with the subjunctive, so were is the Official Subjunctive Mood Verb For All Occasions: I were, you were, he were, we were, they were. You can use it as a "to be" verb, or as part of a verb phrase (no, I won't get into that now): If I were walking, I'd be out of breath.

The subjunctive comes into play when we wish something, too: I wish I were a fish (and if you remember The Incredible Mr. Limpett, my condolences---so do I).