  Recently effective actions have been extensively used to describe tachyon
condensation in string theory. While the various effective actions which have
appeared in the literature have very similar properties for static
configurations, they differ for time-dependent tachyons. In this paper we
discuss general properties of non-linear effective Lagrangians which are first
order in derivatives. In particular we show that some observed properties, such
as asymptotically vanishing pressure, are rather generic features, although the
quantative features differ. On the other hand we argue that certain features of
marginal tachyon profiles are beyond the reach of any first order Lagrangian
description. We also point out that an effective action, proposed earlier,
captures the dynamics of tachyons well.
