Don, I think that what we need to determine about participle-led sequences
is their specific syntactic role in each sentence. For instance, in your
sentence: `I saw him sitting in the park', the present-participle phrase has
an adjectival function (I saw the sitting-in-the-park him), and for that
reason, it can embed the structure of the sentence. In your sentence: `I
could hear him down in his workshop, wishing he would call it a night',
there is a lurking conjunction: `I could hear him down in his workshop and I
was wishing he would call it a night'. So this participle sequence is in
fact a foreshortened sentence. If it attaches successfully to the verb of
the leading sentence, then it is in order. If not, it `dangles' and is out
of order.  But it cannot work its way back to modifying the subject of the
independent sentence `I could hear him' unless it can embed its structure.
And it cannot.
Sophie
----- Original Message -----
From: Don Stewart <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 1:24 PM
Subject: Re: Those participials


> Sophie,
>
> Some interesting things are happening here. You say that there is no
> participle here, that it is a noun phrase, a gerund. But to achieve that,
> you had to change "him" to "his," the old possessive in front of the
gerund
> trick. I don't thinks so. This is "I saw him sitting in the park," not "I
> heard his whistling in the dark."
>
> Let's try a different tack. Let's try to get a real participial phrase
that
> makes it all the way back to the subject, using my sentence. How about "I
> could hear him down in his workshop, wishing he would call it a night."
> Does that work? Can anyone think of one that really does? And an
explanation
> of why?
>
> P.S. Look at how all my commas and periods are inside the closing quotes.
I
> do believe that is the rule in both MLA and APA. Begging to differ with
> Jeff, I don't think this is a minor point, and being consistently wrong is
> not too good an idea either.
>
> Don Stewart
>
> --
> Keeper of the memory and method of Francis Christensen.
> WriteforCollege.com
> The Stewart English Program (epsbooks.com)
> > From: Sophie Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
> > Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> > <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:33:38 +1000
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: Those participials
> >
> > Don, it seems to me that in your sentence: "I could hear him down in his
> > workshop, hammering away on his latest project", the sequence `hammering
> > away' is prevented from modifying the subject because it is itself part
of
> > the object. I.e.: what "I" could hear is "him hammering away". There is
no
> > participle phrase here. Rather, there is a noun phrase. (And, given that
we
> > have a noun phrase, the relationship between pronoun and noun is
genitive: I
> > could hear his ... hammering.)
> > Sophie
> > ---- Original Message -----
> > From: Don Stewart <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Friday, July 27, 2001 4:18 AM
> > Subject: Those participials
> >
> >
> >> Now's the time for me to jump in with a question that's been on my mind
> > for
> >> a while. Sophie points out that the participial phrase at the end acts
> > like
> >> a foreshortened sentence and thus refers back to the subject. Martha
adds
> >> good examples and rightly advocates the use of the nonrestrictive
> >> participles.
> >>
> >> But what about one like "I could hear him down in his workshop,
hammering
> >> away on his latest project"? I see that this could be written "I could
> > hear
> >> him hammering away on his latest project down in the basement."
> >>
> >> Is the ability to be written as restrictive, which seems to coincide
with
> >> the inability to float as a free modifier, the defining quality of this
> >> participial phrase that keeps it from getting all the way back to
modify
> > the
> >> subject?
> >>
> >> Don Stewart
> >> --
> >> Keeper of the memory and method of Francis Christensen.
> >> WriteforCollege.com
> >> The Stewart English Program (epsbooks.com)
> >>
> >> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface
> > at:
> >> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> >> and select "Join or leave the list"
> >>
> >> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >
> > To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface at:
> > http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> > and select "Join or leave the list"
> >
> > Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
at:
>      http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/