I was going to respond with an explanation of the obscure terms, but I'm sure without looking that Wikipedia can do a better job than I.

Instead, I would like to exhort you and everyone else to take an interest in linguistics[1]. I really wish we could replace our 12 years of mathematical education, which I think is overall quite useless[2], with 12 years of linguistic education. If we spent 12 years learning how all of the world's languages work, I also think we would go a long way to reduce xenophobia and racism. [3]

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't want people to learn how to speak correctly. I want people to expand their innate curiosity for just how goddam smart humans are at languages. Like the article said, the unusual thing isn't that we can't keep lie/lay/lied/lain/laid straight, but that we can keep almost everything else straight. Language is a unique human phenomenon. We have opposable thumbs, but so do monkeys, and elephants are quite handy (haha!) with their trunks. Even a raven can use tools, but no other animal exhibits the breadth of ability of language that we do. Birdsongs are complicated and maybe even culturally transmitted, but they can't be used to dictate laws or record writing or persuade others as I am now trying to persuade you.[4]

Linguistics is a science: it proceeds by gathering empirical data of how humans speak, then formulates hypotheses that will predict how they will speak, and confirms or denies these hypotheses. What more interesting object of study than ourselves! Language is something we all do on a daily basis, spontaneously, naturally. Ever wondered why we do it the way we do it?

Sadly, the beauty of this science is clouded behind the way it is taught today in schools, along with a jargon that further distances some of us from the actual object of study. To the prescriptivist grammarians, I say their objective is as futile as trying to educate ants on architecture: ants will build anthills as they see fit. But for the jargon, I am sad to say that some of it is inevitable, because we need the lens of analysis and classification in order to see the true attraction of our linguistic abilities.

Transitive or intransitive verbs don't occur only in English: virtually every human language has something like them. Participles are less universal, but they are also not a uniquely English phenomenon. But why does this happen? Why does every known language have verbs but only some has participles? Why do humans craft languages as they do? Therein lies the science! (or lays?)

So, try to learn some linguistic jargon. Underneath it lies a very interesting set of concepts that describe an ability that uniquely characterises our species. :-)

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[1] The language log is a good place to start finding interesting things:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/

[2] Particularly when calculus is the ultimate goal of elementary mathematical education. When was the last time you or most adults around you had an urgent need for calculus? Can you even state, say, Rolle's theorem without looking it up?

[3] For example, did you know that ebonics has way more verb tenses that express very nuanced moments in time, nuances which standard English lacks?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_En...

[4] Here is a pretty interesting that theorises that human language may have evolved from some characteristics found in birdsong!

http://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-language-evolved-birdsong...