Re: YAEDT? Syntax in dialects of English (was: Of accents & dialects (was: Azurian phonology)

Yes, "I was lain" does occur from time to time in my neck of the woods.  Well summised!





P.

--- On Mon, 27/10/08, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
From: R A Brown <ray@...>
Subject: Re: YAEDT? Syntax in dialects of English (was: Of accents & dialects (was:
Azurian phonology)
To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
Date: Monday, 27 October, 2008, 8:09 AM

Eugene Oh wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 3:22 PM, Elliott Lash <erelion12@...>
wrote:
> 
>> Ray's observation that it is common enough down south accords with
my
>> observations. I live in Cambridge and although I know some
northerners, most
>> of my friends and acquaintances are southern - Hertfordshire, Isle of
White,
>> Surrey, Somerset, London, Essex - etc. I've caught all of them
saying 'I was
>> sat' and 'I was stood'. Never did here 'I was
laid' - although I did ask one
>> of my friends about it a few weeks ago and he says that he'd never
heard it
>> either.
>>
>> -Elliott
>  
> Probably because "I was laid" has slang associations with it. ;)
That's true! I've heard "I was laid" = 'I was lying'
only in Newport, 
South Wales, and the surrounding area. Also there it is IME always 
pronounced colloquially as 'I was led' - I even found it written that 
way by school kids more than once when I was teaching there.

I've never come across this elsewhere. Indeed, here "I was
laying" is 
the usual form for standard English "I was lying" - I believe this
use 
of "lay" for both the transitive verb (standard English) and the 
intransitive (SE 'lie') is common in very many areas. This leads me to 
suspect that if the very common colloquial British "I was sat" &
"I was 
stood" occurred also with lying down one would have "I was
lain". Does 
it occur?

-- 
Ray
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