Present progressive tense?

It's past progressive.

Present progressive: She picks up a stick that is lying at her feet.

Or, if you want both verbs in present progressive:

She is picking up the stick that is lying at her feet.

But that sounds as if English is not your first language.

Elaine Margarett said:

I've read (and reread) the sticky on Lay/Lie which is great (!), but now my question is, is this sentence present progressive tense?

She picked up a stick that was laying at her feet. The she, BTW is a dog, if that makes a difference.

I'm going to print up Maryn's post and put it inside my grammar book. I think if I keep reading it I'll get it. The first I've been that optomistic. <g>

Thanks!
EM

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Well, it's not that simple. This looks like a simple past to me.

Subject: She
Verb: picked (up)
Object modified by adverbial phrase: a stick that was lying at her feet

As you can see, the verb in the sentence is simple past, not progressive.

Present progressive would be:
She is picking up a stick that lies at her feet.

Past progressive would be:
She was picking up a stick that lay at her feet.

Elaine Margarett said:

I've read (and reread) the sticky on Lay/Lie which is great (!), but now my question is, is this sentence present progressive tense?

She picked up a stick that was laying at her feet. The she, BTW is a dog, if that makes a difference.

I'm going to print up Maryn's post and put it inside my grammar book. I think if I keep reading it I'll get it. The first I've been that optomistic. <g>

Thanks!
EM

Click to expand...

This looks like a simple past to me.

Subject: She
Verb: picked (up)
Object modified by adverbial phrase: a stick that was lying at her feet

As you can see, the verb in the sentence is simple past, not progressive.

Present progressive would be:
She is picking up a stick that lies at her feet.

Past progressive would be:
She was picking up a stick that lay at her feet.

@abstinvidia: ...was lying...

But you're right that the main verb has simple past tense. (Sentences don't have tense; verbs do. A sentence can contain verbs in different tense/aspect constellation [present/past = tense; simple/progressive/perfect = aspect].)

Dawnstorm said:

@abstinvidia: ...was lying...

But you're right that the main verb has simple past tense. (Sentences don't have tense; verbs do. A sentence can contain verbs in different tense/aspect constellation [present/past = tense; simple/progressive/perfect = aspect].)

Click to expand...

The question was: Is this sentence present progressive tense?

The answer is: No, the sentence is simple past tense.

There is a dependent clause that contains a past progressive, but that doesn't make the sentence itself past progressive.

Elaine Margarett said:

I'm so confused. :-(

As written is the sentence correct. (That should have been the question.)

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Almost.

Change "laying" to "lying" and you've got it.

absitinvidia said:

The question was: Is this sentence present progressive tense?

The answer is: No, the sentence is simple past tense.

There is a dependent clause that contains a past progressive, but that doesn't make the sentence itself past progressive.

Click to expand...

This.

BTW - re lying and laying, if she picked up a hen that was laying at her feet, it would mean that she picked up a hen while it was laying eggs.

Elaine Margarett said:

I'm so confused. :-(

As written is the sentence correct. (That should have been the question.)

Click to expand...

Sorry for the confusion.

As others have already said, your sentence is correct, except for the "laying" --> "lying" part.

Now, I'll walk us through the confusion, and I hope I do so without making things worse.

The original sentence (corrected for lay/lie):
Your question:
The first thing to note is this:

"Tense" is not a feature of sentences; it's a feature of verbs. A verb may have tense. But a sentence has verbs, and thus you often hear "present tense sentence", for example. But this is really only short for "The verb in this sentence is in the present tense."

There is a problem, when a sentence contains more than one verb - and these verbs are in different tenses. The sentence in question is an example. It contains two verbs:

"picked up" - which is past tense simple.
and
"was lying" - which is past tense progressive

Actually, these two verbs do not differ in "tense" but in "aspect", but that's another topic. I don't want to complicate things even further, so I'll just say that "past tense simple" and "past tense progressive" are both sub-types of the blanket category: "past tense".

Since there are two verbs in one sentence which are in different tenses, there is room for misunderstandings, when you ask which tense the sentence is.

Now, there is a loose convention to give priority to the verb of the main clause. That is, in your sentence, "picked up". And this is why absitinvidia talked about "picked up" rather than "was lying".

So, to summarise the facts:

You have two verbs, one in past tense simple (picked up), and one in past tense progressive (was lying).

You can avoid a lot of confusion by only talking about tense in connection with verbs, not sentences. There is less room for misunderstanding if you ask:
The answer to that is: you're right about progressive part, but wrong about the present part. It's past tense.

I agree with Dawnstorm.

Here is a site that may help when trying to keep the conjugations straight:

'To lie'

http://conjugator.reverso.net/conjugation-english-verb-lie-v1.html

compared to 'to lay':
http://conjugator.reverso.net/conjugation-english-verb-to lay.html

So once you have decided which verb you need for the situation, look up the conjugations chart. HTH