Terry;

In Catholic grammar school they had different ways to teach us how to remember rules of the American form of the English language. As Sister Mary Saint Stanislaus stated, “A chicken lay’s eggs”! Perhaps the "good Sister" was inferring that we were not chickens? :)

Tom

P.S. The "good Sister" was very mean!



>While I'm at it, I've noticed time and time again Americans using "lay" instead of "lie".
>
>e.g. "I was laying on the bed"
>
>This suggests he was dropping an egg on the bed.
>
>"Lay" is the imperfect of "Lie", and "Lying" is the participle
>
>e.g. "I was lying on the bed", "I lay on the bed".
>
>But transitively you lay, as in:
>
>"I'm going to lay my vacation clothes on the bed", and the imperfect/pp are "laid" and "laying"
>
>e.g. "the hen laid an egg" and "I was laying a carpet"
>
>Of course, there is the other American use of to lay, which suggests that in the first sentence/example, the speaker wasn't alone :-)