Originally posted by Bailey
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The different forms include .
I lie down on the spot, meaning I am carrying out the action of lying down in the present.
I lay down on the spot, meaning I carried out the action of lying down in the past.
I am lying on the spot means that's where I am and what I am doing - a continuous situation in the present.
I was lying on the spot means that's where I was and what I was doing - a continuous action in the past.
Now just to make things confused, you can use lay to mean an action carried out on somebody or something in the present. For instance, a officer surrendering might say I lay my sword at your feet in a quaintly old world way. WH Auden used this form in this first line of a poem: Lay your sleeping head, my love.....
But the past form of lay when used in this way is laid, as in I laid my sword at his feet.
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