Word Choice – ‘Lie on the Basis of’ vs ‘Lie at the Basis of’

grammaticalityprepositionsword-choicewriting

I often read in scientific papers a sentence of the form "X lies on the basis of Y." or "X lies at the basis of Y." to indicate that Y is caused by X in some fundamental way. Are both forms valid and common? (Maybe both are poor English?)

Best Answer

The phrase "X lies at the basis of Y", while arguably clumsy, is used reasonably often in English. On the other hand, I do not believe that "X lies on the basis of Y" is something a native English speaker would say. Consider the following Google Ngram :

Ngram for at/on the basis of

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