What about "I lay my head on the pillow"?
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Why not read some stories instead
NEW! Want a quick read for your coffee break? Why not try this... Flash Erotica: Scrubber Yeah, that one is less clear cut, but I believe it should still be "I lie my head on the pillow" if we're in present tense. Lay, in present tense, is for an object separate from the person. As the head is part of the person, it should be lie.
I lie down
Yesterday, I lay down
I lay my book down
Yesterday, I laid my book down
I lie my head down
Yesterday, I lay my head down
Hmm, not sure about that. It doesn't matter that your head is part of you, it becomes the object. In "I lie on the pillow" - "I" is the thing being lain. In "I lay my head on the pillow" the verb belongs to "my head" or my pants or my soul etc
"Now, I lay my hand on her thigh" works for me.
Of course, none of this would be necessary if people didn't insist on writing in the frankly awful first-person present tense
Warning: The opinions above are those of an anonymous individual on the internet. They are opinions, unless they're facts. They may be ill-informed, out of touch with reality or just plain stupid. They may contain traces of irony. If reading these opinions causes you to be become outraged or you start displaying the symptoms of outrage, stop reading them immediately. If symptoms persist, consult a psychiatrist.
Why not read some stories instead
NEW! Want a quick read for your coffee break? Why not try this... Flash Erotica: Scrubber It's an interesting point, especially in first person narrative, as to whether or not colloquialisms should be used as a tool for story-telling at the expense of what should be"correct".
Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series are told by the main character, Peter. He almost always uses personal pronouns incorrectly: "Me and Lesley jumped in the jag and sped to the Folly".
The verbal mistake rounds Peter as a character, even if it makes your inner pedant shudder. The way people say things can tell you as much about them as what they actually say. Peter's not well educated, he's not even a very good cop - so he would make grammatical errors like that when telling a story.
By the time the third book comes along Aaronovitch is using this to poke fun at people who think he does it because he can't write: "The school was where countless generations of the Peckwater Estate had been educated, including me and Abigail. Or, as Nightingale insists it should be, Abigail and I." Yes, that's a joke at grammarians and it's hilarious, trust me.
Warning: The opinions above are those of an anonymous individual on the internet. They are opinions, unless they're facts. They may be ill-informed, out of touch with reality or just plain stupid. They may contain traces of irony. If reading these opinions causes you to be become outraged or you start displaying the symptoms of outrage, stop reading them immediately. If symptoms persist, consult a psychiatrist.
Why not read some stories instead
NEW! Want a quick read for your coffee break? Why not try this... Flash Erotica: Scrubber Come on, guys. Is it not worth mentioning the participle form of the verb lay
The participle form of the verb is "lain"
Now a participle form of a verb will follow the verb of a sentence instead of acting as the verb itself.
I'll show you some examples and use bold to highlight the verb of the sentence.
Past tense: "He had lain in wait all day, stalking his prey."
Present: "I have lain in bed all day with a headache."
Future: "By then we will have lain aside our differences."
You could also use the simple participle form of the verb by adding "ing" at the end. Again, the participle will follow the verb and act as an adjective and I will show the verb with bold text.
Present:
Transitive: "I am laying the book down."
Intransitive: "I am lying down in bed."
Past:
Transitive: "I was laying the book down"
Intransitive: "I was lying down in bed"
Crap ... Its been a while .. I thought there maybe some offers in here or good advice.
A few things:
I think there is a difference, as Danielle says, between plain old first-person narration and more dialogue-based first-person narration. Take the following examples:
A) When I walked into the store I saw her. It was the woman whom I had seen in the park the day before. She was as lovely as ever.
B) All right, bub. Since you asked, I'm gonna tell you the story of how I met Becky. She was the first girl who I ever asked to dance. Pull up a chair and get comfortable.
So I would say that in version B, it makes sense for the narrator to say "gonna" and to use "who" where "whom" is correct. There's a certain level of grammatical correctness that he isn't going to use in speech (or a written representation of his speech).
Where that line is varies from person to person, obviously, and also depends on that person's audience. I'll use whom correctly when talking to my students, but not if I'm telling an old college buddy a story (even if he's a professor of literature and we both know that we both know how to use relative pronouns). And no matter who is answering the door when I ring the doorbell, I will never ever never say "It is I," or worse, "It is we."
In the case of my story, I felt that my first-person narration fell more under example B above than A, because my narrator was constantly talking to a particular addressee. I felt that he wouldn't use whom in this particular story with the particular addressee he had.
I guess this is a place where we disagree. As I recall we were able to skirt the issue by simply dropping the who/whom in question, as can be done when the rel. pron. is a direct object. (And I'm glad you let me get away with the other grammatical errors I asked for leeway on in the submission note: all the could of, should of, etc).