15 Comments
I wrote 'An apple is lying upon the table' and of course I was marked wrong...yet I would say 'upon' and 'na' is also 'upon'.
I'm not sure that apples can "lie" on tables. Books, magazines, flat things, not to mention cats, dogs, people - yes; spherical objects - not so sure.
946
Maybe the apple is flat like a laptop ;) if you translate the company's name into Polish - why not^^ Anyway, I know that's usually not done/ expressed that way and probably not what you meant...
However - I do think, that "is lying" also fits for round eatable apples. At least you use it in German
In English the apple would be sitting on the table not lying on it, and an apple computer would be called a mac, not an apple :)
Maybe it's not exactly logical (because most apples are more or less round-ish), but we say that an apple is lying, not that it's standing.
Sorry, no. "laying" is the present participle of the verb "to lay" (motion). "lying" is the present participle of the verb "to lie" (no motion).
The confusion comes in because "lay" is also the past tense of the verb "to lie" :
lie (present), lay (past), lain (past participle)
lay (present), laid (past), laid (past participle)
Someone laid the apple on the table, now it's just lying there.
http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/lay-vs-lie
see also https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/usage/laid-or-lain
Agree....laid/lain is clearly past tense, but lay/laying/lie/lying are all present tense English so I think this should be accepted but could be wrong?
As Augustine2017 explains above, "laying" and "lying" are parts of different verbs. The first is transitive; the second is intransitive.
My thought would be, if the apple is "laying" on the table, "Hmmm. I wonder what it's laying; a pip perhaps"?
"The apple's on the table" is incorrect. Why? It means the exact same thing as "The apple is on the table" or "The apple is lying on the table".
If "The apple is on the table" is accepted (which I'd think it should be), then it is probably just an oversight if "The apple's on the table" is not accepted. I'd suggest using the "Report" function.
