The weather will be what fate determines.
He broke the stone that he might find a fossil.
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. |
Parenthetical Elements
Parenthetical elements, like so to speak, it is hoped, it is reported, they remark, which have no grammatical connection with the rest of the assertion, occur frequently. Sometimes they are inclosed within dashes, sometimes within parentheses, sometimes within commas.
This action, it is expected, will produce results.