+Introductory Hints.+—In this Lesson we wish to notice words and phrases that in certain uses have no grammatical connection with the rest of the sentence.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars. Dear Brutus serves only to arrest attention, and is independent by address.
Poor man! he never came back again. Poor man is independent by exclamation.
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Rod and staff simply call attention to the objects before anything is said of them, and are independent by pleonasm—a construction used sometimes for rhetorical effect, but out of place in ordinary speech.
His master being absent, the business was neglected. His master being absent logically modifies the verb was neglected by assigning the cause, but the phrase has no connective expressed or understood, and is therefore grammatically independent. This is called the absolute phrase. An absolute phrase consists of a noun or a pronoun used independently with a modifying participle.
His conduct, generally speaking, was honorable. Speaking is a participle without connection, and with the adverb generally forms an independent phrase.
To confess the truth, I was wrong. The infinitive phrase is independent.
The adverbs well, now, why, there are sometimes independent; as, Well, life is an enigma; Now, that is strange; Why, it is already noon; There are pitch-pine Yankees and white-pine Yankees.
Interjections are without grammatical connection, as you have learned, and hence are independent.
Whatever is enclosed within marks of parenthesis is also independent of the rest of the sentence; as, I stake my fame (and I had fame), my heart, my hope, my soul, upon this cast.