Absolute Elements
Most of the elements of a sentence have a clear grammatical relation to one another. But there are pieces of structure which have no evident relationship to anything else.
| Noun absolute: | He lay down, his heart heavy with sorrow. |
| Hat in hand, he came down stairs. |
The participle absolute is more frequent.
| Participle absolute: | This said, he sat down. |
| One of them having fallen, the rest ran away. | |
| The teacher absenting himself, there was no school. |