merging verbs

Everyone knows we're slowing losing the distinction between lie and lay, a process not helped by the past tense of lie being lay, or lay's being regular (if oddly spelled) while lie is irregular and English loving to smooth out those irregulars. But it's not stopping there.

First, what's the difference between lie and lay? They're a clearly related pair of verbs; the first is intransitive (meaning it takes no object) and the second transitive (meaning it does). So, things lie, but are laid, that is, lie means "to be lying" but lay means "to put into a lying position" (granted the extended meanings, of course). It's useful to have a pair of verbs; you can use the transitive one without specifying the object, as for instance about hens: "Did the hens lay yet?" or "This hen is a good layer." and despite the absence of an overt object, one is clearly implied.

But if you say "Lie it down over there" people know what you mean. And if you say "Lay down and get some sleep" only wise-asses ask "lay who down?" (or whom). And that's the way things are going: the verbs are merging. People complain about it all the time.

What they aren't complaining about is the other two pairs of verbs that are undergoing an equal merging.

Set and sit, for instance. In this case, they're both irregular, though set is one of those verbs, like put, that doesn't inflect for tense at all (it does take the -s for third-person singular, and the -ing, but then every single verb in English does those). But alongside "set it down over there" and "sit down" you'll hear "sit yourself down". For a lot of people, this merge may be more or less transparent due to the similarity in the vowels. Just as pin and pen are homonyms for many people, sit and set are close enough that their merging may be unnoticed; you hear what you want to hear.

But what about the other pair? Raise and rise. They're like lay and lie in that the transitive verb is regular (in this case, regularly spelled as well) while rise is not. With raise/rise the nouns maintain the difference, too: a rise in prices or sea level, a high-rise building or "catching a ball on the rise" show things going upwards on their own; a raise in wages is one that someone has created.

Yet people are mixing these verbs up as well. A quick Google search this morning shows these intransitive uses of raise (in none of these is there an implied object, as in, for instance, saying in a poker game "Bob raises, John folds, what about you?"; each should be rises):

• A photograph titled "Mist raises from Tuolumne Meadows on a autumn morning"
• On an Italian translation web site, an offered "the fog raises away from its thinnest meshes" (which was corrected to "rises" by another reader)
• A music review says "His music is the perfect backdrop for the late nights of empty street calm, when the fog raises from below the streets and traffic lights flash."

And on the 13th of November (the day I started this post (though things intervened)) I heard a transitive use of rise - and on the BBC no less!

"Will this be an excuse to rise prices elsewhere?"

You can find more, too, if you work at it. Like this screen-saver ad: "Balloons are going to rise you into the sky towards the light of stars." Or quite a few songs with lyrics including the phrase "rise me up" or "rise me high". Or the Daily Reflections for Oct 10: "Lord, You rise me up from sleep and slumber. You rise me up from sin and death." Heck, I even found a poker guy(!) saying

Now thinking about that hand, he played 7, 2 off suit and at no time did he re-rise me, so did he think I was bluffing, well no in my opinion, if he put me on a bluff the correct move was to re-rise me, now when I bet £100 on the turn did he still put me on a draw maybe, but by then he should of folded, he knows that his pair of 7’s is no good, what hands can he beat not many ...What am saying is the more cards the he allowed me to see the more hands the were beating him, he should of folded or re-raised at no time should he just call.

For this fellow the two verbs seem to have merged completely: the bare form (used with did and to) is rise but the regular past is raised. Now there are some other things going on here as well: comma splicing; his spelling of "should have" as "should of" (as it sounds); and the very interesting use of "the" instead of "that", but for him "rise" is the transitive form. He's a Brit, or at least he's playing for pounds, but all that means is the merging of the verbs is going on more places than here.

Are we doomed to lose the distinction? Looks kind of like it. Which, for all that I'm no prescriptivist, is too bad. It's a useful one. But it looks as though lots of people are getting by without it, and I expect we all will find other ways to make it if we have to.