ShmoopTube

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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by expeditions. We suggest you hurry up and

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explore, so you can complete your expedition expeditiously.

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What should replace the underlined words below?

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Hopefully, before we start out on our ninth expedition, I will have lain down for a while.

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We're going to start you out with the correct answer here, A, no change necessary.

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The different forms of "lie" are some of the most confusing verb forms around.

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The act of becoming prostrate is the verb "lie"...

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While the verb "lay" means to set something down.

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There, now that we've got that cleared up...

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The past tense form of "lie" is "laid," while the past participle is "lain."

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All of the answer choices here use the helping verb "have," so we know that the answer has

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to be in the past perfect tense, which always requires a past participle.

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What can we say? It's a picky tense.

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Since both (B) and (D) use the past tense "laid" instead of the past participle "lain,"

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we know that neither one of them is the correct answer.

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While choice (C) does get the past participle right, it's a little confused about the timeframe.

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The sentence is referring to a nap that will occur in the future, not one that already

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happened, making (C) incorrect.

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This means that the sentence was OK to begin with and confirms that A is the correct answer.

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Shmoopin' is hard work, so like the guy in this sentence, we hope there's a nap in our

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near future.

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