The structure of the English sentence

by Lillian Kimball Stewart

In the following sentence from Geikie,—“Entering the polluted Temple space, and gazing round on the tumult and manifold defilement, He could not remain impassive,” the phrase is plainly equivalent in meaning to an adverbial clause, telling when (and in some degree why) he could not remain impassive. But grammatically the phrase is an adjunct of the subject He.

Lest it should not be perfectly clear to the reader what particular relation the participial phrase is intended to denote, the author often indicates the relation by the same conjunction that he would use to introduce an adverbial clause; as, “But we must above all other things take into account, when considering the position of the Hindoo Sepoy, the influence of the tremendous institution of caste.”—McCarthy. Without when the reader’s first thought would be that the phrase denotes cause.

In this sentence from Cooper,—“But the vessels of which we write, though constructed at so remote a period, would have done credit to the improvements of our own time,” the concessive phrase might have been interpreted as causal, if though had not been inserted.

In this sentence from Hamlin Garland,—“Each soul was solemn, as if facing the Maker of the world,” the fact that the phrase denotes manner is made evident by the conjunction as if. Any conjunction used like when, though, as if in the sentences quoted, may be said to introduce the participial phrase and to indicate its relation.

Note.—In all such sentences as the above, where the participial phrase is introduced by a subordinating conjunction, it is perfectly proper, before analyzing, to supply the words necessary to make the participial phrase into an adverbial clause. It is more satisfactory, indeed, to do this except in a few cases where such an expansion gives a verb that does not harmonize in tense or form of conjugation with the verb in the principal proposition; for example, “Though holding no office and steadily refusing an election to the Storthing, he has been the life and soul of the liberal party.”—Boyesen. Here the concord of tenses would call for has held and has refused in the concessive clause instead of the progressive verb-phrases has been holding and has been refusing.

(c) The absolute phrase as a substitute for a dependent proposition.—In all the preceding examples the substitution of a participial phrase for a clause was made easy by the fact that the subject of the clause was the same as the subject of the principal proposition. When the subject is not the same, the clause is condensed into what has been termed an absolute phrase; as, “Nature, her patience with him being ended, leaves him desolate.”—Carlyle.

The absolute phrase consists essentially of a substantive and a participle, having to each other the logical relation of subject and predicate. In the sentence quoted the phrase is equivalent to the adverbial clause of cause, because her patience with him is ended. The absolute phrase is usually said to be grammatically independent, but it is so frequently used as to be a regular English construction now, and as such may be said to modify the predicate of the principal proposition.

Notice that it is not a participial phrase that modifies the predicate; it is an absolute phrase. The participial phrase is only one of the two equal parts of the absolute phrase; it can hardly be said to modify the noun, which is the other part, but it stands side by side with the noun to make an absolute phrase.

The absolute phrase denotes other relations than that of cause. The most common are concession and time; as, “Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues?”—Macaulay. “Night coming on, they broke the bolts of the Town gates.”—Carlyle.

(d) The chief use of the absolute phrase is to take the place of an independent proposition; thus, “A child of three sat up in his crib and screamed at the top of his voice, his fists clinched and his eyes full of terror.”—Kipling. Here the absolute phrases have no relation of time, cause, concession, etc., to the principal proposition, hence are not modifiers. If expanded into propositions these phrases would only add coördinate thoughts to the first one—“His fists were clinched,” and “his eyes were full of terror.” It is best to call such phrases accompaniments of the predicate instead of modifiers.