Lie vs Lay vs #MileyCyrus

Andrea, from Los Angeles, wrote recently to ask if I had seen the letter (posted on multiple media sites) from “rock Indie heartthrob” Sufjan Stevens to Miley Cyrus. I thought I could guess the topic, but, no, he was not taking Miley to task for her famously outlandish twerking at the VMA Awards. Instead, it turned out to be perhaps the first charmingly suggestive fan letter ever disguised as a grammar lesson.

Stevens opened by pointing to Miley’s use of “lay” instead of “lie” in her current song, “#Get It Right.” A quick reading of the lyrics revealed worse defects than grammar (lack of subtlety, for one). But Stevens’s concern was this:

“I been laying in this bed all night long

Don’t you think it’s time to get it on”

“Miley,” Stevens said in the letter, “technically speaking, you’ve been LYING, not LAYING; (laying is) an irregular verb form that should only be used when there’s an object, i.e., ‘I been laying my tired booty on this bed all night long.’”

Stevens, a forgiving guy, says, “But don’t worry, even Faulkner messed it up.”

Now, I assume here that Stevens is referring to William Faulkner’s novel, “As I Lay Dying.” However, I think Stevens has this one wrong: Faulkner’s title suggests a past form verb tense, and since the past form of “lie” is “lay” then both the verb and tense are impeccable. Whatever.

Perhaps too much Miley on the brain got Stevens momentarily muddled, because he was soon grammatically back on track, pointing out that #Get It Right got the verb tense wrong: “Surely, you’ve heard of the Present Perfect Continuous Tense (I HAVE BEEN LYING in this bed all night long …)?” Here, Stevens is absolutely right, if a tad school-marmish given the context and nature of the song.

The present perfect continuous tense that Stevens cites is used when we want to convey an action started in the past that is still continuing. (“I’ve been waiting forever!”) What Stevens neglected to mention is that few Western languages have this tense – and English is unique among the Germanic languages it’s a part of to have it (thank you, 5^th century Celts!)

Oddly, Stevens stays away from this wonderful bit of arcane linguistic history when describing the present perfect continuous. Instead, he uses the tense as a jumping-off point for combining verb tense knowledge, as well as what emerges as his own Miley-mania, all in one:

“It’s a weird, equivocal, almost purgatorial tense, not quite present, not quite past, not quite here, not quite there. Somewhere in between. I feel that way all the time. It kind of sucks.” (Go, Sufjan! You’re clearly taking this tense seriously.)

Then he gets personal: “But I have a feeling your ‘present perfect continuous’ involves a lot more excitement than mine. Anyway, doesn’t that also sum up your career right now? Present. Perfect. Continuous. And Tense. Intense?”

Honestly, if grammar were made this exciting in school, perhaps teachers might consider teaching it (first, most teachers would have to learn it, since English grammar stopped being taught in American public schools in the 1970s). But a Sufjan Stevens grammar class could clearly be a high school favorite.

As Stevens brings his note to a heated close, he drops his grammar lesson but still manages to bring parsing and passion together:

“Girl, you work it like Mike Tyson. Miley, I love you because you’re the Queen, grammatically and anatomically speaking. And you’re the hottest cake in the pan.

Don't ever grow old. Live brightly before your fire fades into total darkness. XXOO Sufjan”

Language Lady thanks this Indie rocker grammar-guy for bringing “lay,” “lie,” #Miley, verb tenses, and even personal tension to our attention; after all, attention to grammar is, ideally, Present. Perfect (well, rarely, even among those who try). And Continuous.

ADDENDUM

More than one reader responded to the “Such,” “As,” and “Such as by” article with thoughts that had occurred to me early on, but got ruled out the more I researched the exact meaning of “such,” “such as,” and “such as by.” 

The feeling among these readers, who thoughtfully went through my post with a fine-toothed comb, was that “such as” and “such as by” are legitimate legal phrases and that in the given document, “such as by” implies that there are more out ways possible than the examples given, whereas “as by” implies only the given examples.

Their concern was that perhaps by tweaking the legalese the way I did, I might have also changed the meaning. Any opinions or considerations out there?

Such As, By, and Such as by

The Language Lady has started going through her mail, and will address readers' questions in the next few entries. FIrst is one from Daniel, a lawyer in California: 

Q. Hello Language Lady,

The basic question is whether one must say “such as by,” or is it equally acceptable to say “as by”?  That is, do you need the “such”?  Consider this sentence: 

“If the recipient of the disparaging communication cannot act on the injurious words, such as by reducing or withdrawing his bid on the property, then no tort occurs.”

Would that sentence be just as good if I said “. . . injurious words, as by reducing ….”? 

A. Hi Daniel,

Good Point!  It’s great to know there are grammatically aware lawyers out there who want to eliminate unnecessary words; and you’re right in detecting that there is something unhealthy about that sentence. But it’s not just “such.”

Let’s start by paring the phrase down to its subject-verb-object essentials:

“If recipient cannot act on words, such as by reducing or withdrawing …”

The problem is with “such as.” Look what happens when we take "such as" away:

“If recipient cannot act on the injurious words by reducing or withdrawing his bid on the property, then no tort occurs.” Using only “by” shows the means by which the recipient might take action. “Such as” is extraneous because the phrase itself goes with things, not actions. For example:

“I eat fruit, such as apples and bananas.” Here, “such as” specifies what kind of fruit (apples and bananas). We don’t say, “I eat fruit, such as by peeling apples and bananas.” 

That is basically what is going on in your document: “such as” is modifying “injurious words” while the little preposition “by” is showing how the required action should be taken; i.e., “reducing” or “withdrawing” the bid.

Sticking “such as” together with “by” is thus a bit like mixing oil and water – each has its special purpose but should not be used together.

Your suggestion to go with “as by,” deleting “such,” would render the pared-down version to: “If recipient cannot act on words, as by reducing or withdrawing his bid …”  Does that sound natural to you?

How about “as by” in a different context:

“She gets to work quickly, as by taking the subway or riding her bike.” It doesn’t work, does it? Right: we don’t need “as.” That sentence should be, “She gets to work quickly by taking the subway or riding her bike.” Just using “by,” is perfectly efficient in showing how she gets to work.

Language Lady will close “by” proposing another version for your document, “such as”: “If the recipient of the disparaging communication cannot act on the injurious words and neither reduces nor withdraws his bid on the property, then no tort occurs.”

“Me and My Friend” : Another Rule Bites the Dust

“It’s Sunday evening and me and my friend Ruth feel like walking.” This was the first sentence in a front-page article I found in this week’s “West Side Spirit,” a weekly neighborhood paper written about and by generally educated and informed Upper West Siders in New York.

As the article unfolded, it was clear that this sentence was not intended to be dialect or deliberately slang-y; it was a serious article, a thought piece about the fallen World Trade Center and the Freedom Tower that is rising in its place. The author’s use of “me and my friend Ruth” (yes, devoid of commas, too) was simply his natural language, the same one my own 20-something children often use among their peers.

I’ve been hearing this kind of talk for years. Between the late 1990s and well into the 2000s (and probably yesterday), I typically corrected my young and later teenaged children when they said things like, “Me and James are going uptown;” I forced them to say the standard English, “James and I are going uptown,” before they actually did go uptown. I was not being a grammar snob – just a mom who wanted her children to know how to speak the language that would most help them get a good job and not be considered illiterate at the interview.

Well, them days is over: the writer of the article and that sentence, a man named Adam Berlin, actually teaches writing at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Mr. Berlin’s use of that phrase stood out to me as a sign that the language is changing. It was like hearing President Obama say, “with Michelle and I” (as I noted in a February 2009 blog).

When there is no more social stigma to a particular grammar usage, the fight is pretty much gone; what remains is a certain lengthy transition period – for instance, most Baby Boomers and I will be taking the traditional standard to our graves. (Me and my friends just don’t talk like that!)

And though the writings of one teacher do not immediately constitute an entire generational change, this seems like an example of an established linguistic theory of language change -- like a verbal stone dropped into a river that ripples outward. This particular change has been coming for pretty much my whole life; yet, though baby boomers and Gen Xers rebelled about certain things (the Vietnam War, civil rights, nukes, whales etc.), we pretty much accepted being corrected on that particular grammatical point.

Grammar changes are coming rapidly these days. Since starting this blog seven years ago this month, I have modified my stance on two other big grammar changes that I have come to accept, rather than struggle to uphold: “lie vs lay,” (blog post Sept. 2012), for which there is now no real distinction between the two; and then with the above-mentioned, standard grammarian’s long-decried “with her and I (or other such combinations), which would traditionally have been “with her and me.”

Me and you are probably wondering what will be next.

Accents & Dipthongs

Dear Language Lady, 

   I’m from Chicago and have a passion for languages and accents. I have a Polish friend who has an accent when she speaks English. Even her “hello” sounds different. Is this because she hasn’t mastered the diphthong sounds of our vowels? I’ve heard that the vowels in other languages are pure and ours are diphthong-y. Is this what gives her (and other foreign English speakers) an accent?

- Liz from the WIndy City

  Dear  Windy City Liz,

   Interesting question! But the reason your friend has an accent is not because she is unfamiliar with diphthongs (i.e., elongated vowel sounds) – Polish has those too. The reason your Polish friend has an accent is because she is inserting her Polish vowels and consonants into American words. So before going into diphthongs, I will first explain about accents.

ACCENTS

   Foreign accents – whether it’s Americans speaking another language or vice versa -- are the result of placing your tongue in the same position for a foreign word as you would for your own language.  This goes for consonants as well as vowels. For example: when you’re at a bar and ask for a Dos Equis using your American alphabet sounds, see how gringo you sound? That’s because Spanish speakers pronounce the letter “d” with the “th” sound we use for “the.” So if you say “Dos” using the Spanish “d,” your tongue is then in position to produce their shorter, tighter “o;” add an “s” and – olé – you might even sound authentic (well, until you get to “Equis”).

     European, Asian, Uralic and many other languages tend to keep the tongue in the middle of their mouth to say their vowels – this gives the vowels a certain tension. Try this: while keeping your tongue between the roof of your mouth and your jaw, say ah-eh-eee-oh-oo. Now do the same using our vowel sounds, and notice how your tongue lies naturally in the lower jaw. This is what elongates our vowels and gives them that distinctly American sound.

     For a foreign-accented “hello,” you start with your h-sound + short “e” (heh) in the middle of your mouth, where it naturally produces a clipped “e” sound; this in turn leads to a light, clipped “l” sound tapped quickly on the roof of your mouth, and ends with a tense “o” in the middle of your mouth: Heh-Lohhh! An American, however, would start “hello” with the tongue in the lower jaw, tongue behind the teeth. The “h” + relaxed “e” produced from the lower jaw then leads the tongue to slightly flatten against the roof of the mouth for a heavier-sounding “l” and ends with the “o” elongating in the lower jaw. Hel-LO-o-hhh!

 THONGS (Monoph-, Diph-, and Triph-)

     Thong is an unusual word – not just because we now associate it with the smallest piece of lady’s underwear ever invented. It’s because it’s not only Anglo-Saxon, going all the way back, pre-950 A.D., to the Old Norse word, “thvengr,” meaning “strap,” or piece of material or animal hide to secure something (as the middle piece of a flip-flop or thong-style sandal holds your foot in place), but also a Greek word meaning “sound.”

     The “diphthongs” (pronounced either “dip”- or “dif”-thong) that the writer from Chicago referred to in the letter above literally means “two-sounds,” which many English vowels have, even in a word of only be one syllable, like “day” or “lie.”  When you say the names of our English vowels – A, E, I, O, U – you are saying diphthongs, whose two-sounds can be heard in words like play, rear, fried, boat, and cute. “How” and “low” are diphthongs, too. What each of those vowel sounds has in common is that it forces your mouth and/or tongue to move to complete the sound:

     If you say, “boat,” “how,” and “cute,” notice how, after the initial vowel sound, your lips round together to complete it. After saying the initial sound in “play,” “fried,” and “rear,” your tongue arches upward to make a type of “y”- sound, making these vowels two-sounded. “Pure” vowel sounds, or monophthongs (“monof”thongs), on the other hand, do exist in English – in words like “pop,” “lend,” “please,” and “love.” They’re called “pure” sounds because there is no glide from one sound to another, but are relatively fixed from the beginning to the end of the word. (So, a monophthong is literally FUN!)

     But English hardly has a monopoly on diphthongs; they exist in all major Western languages and in tongues as varied as Estonian, Mandarin Chinese, and Zulu. For instance, diphthongs are why it’s so hard for us English-speakers to say “oeil” or “loi” or “soeur” (eye, law, sister) in French. “Rey,” (king) and “hoy” (today) are among the many diphthongs in Spanish, just as “meu” (my) “oi” (hi) and “muito” (very) are in Portuguese. Say “München” or any umlauted-u or o in German, and you have a diphthong.

     Finally, there’s the “triphthong” – as in the English words, “fire,” “iron,” and “hour” --where a vowel glides from one sound to the next and to another (3 times), all effortlessly with native speakers. You probably never even realized just how acrobatic and articulate your vowel sounds are – but that same speed and subtlety in someone else’s language is elusive to adult non-native speakers; and that will always, to one degree or another, keep the world swimming in foreign accents.

  

Apropos of absolutely nothing

 “Apropos of absolutely nothing” is an expression my dad used to say to bring up a subject unrelated to anything we had been talking about earlier, usually at dinner. Being Midwestern, he pronounced the first word, “APP-r’poh,” and made so little effort to connect the word to its French origin, that I remember as a little girl thinking he had said, “APPLE-poe” and I liked the sound of it. “APPLE-poe of absolutely nothing.”  But I have never found a way to say it naturally, except within the family, and even then I would preface it with, “as Dad would say…”

     I am bringing up this subject a bit apropos of absolutely nothing itself; but it’s a lazy summer evening and I was reading a book just now when suddenly, the author used that very phrase. Since my father passed away many years ago, the words had an immediate Proustian effect: childhood dinners at home flashed before me, and since my place at the table was always next to Dad, I could hear him talking to me and smiling as he said it. (He always gave some facial cue when using a big phrase that could otherwise sound pretentious so as to share the joke – like when he would say the British “SHedule”, instead of our “SKedule”). Nor did he ever say “Apropos of nothing;” with him it, it was always “absolutely nothing,” with “absolutely” stretching out the phrase and further accentuating how irrelevant it was to the previous conversation chain. But until reading that line a few moments ago, I had never read it nor heard anyone else say it.

     “Apropos” was adopted into English from the French “a propos” back in the 17th century and by now should surely not be a stranger. But its Latin roots do tend to relegate it to the back shelf of our linguistic cupboard because it’s just not as useful as other Anglo-Saxon-based, everyday turns of phrase, like, “Oh – you know what?” or in the more current, “This is sort of random but …”

     But if you do decide to use the word “apropos” by itself, you should be aware that it is frequently confused with “appropriate,” according to Bee Dictionary’s “Common Errors in English.” A remark may be apropos (relevant) to a situation, but wearing a tuxedo to a formal event is “appropriate” -- not “apropos.” Or maybe some linguistically-minded chef will invent a new seasonal dessert: the Apple Poe.