> current discussion on the "nominative absolute."  I
> hate to admit this, but I need this explained in more
> elementary terms. Basically, how could I explain this
> sentence to a sixth grader?

Hi Sharon,

I too applaud your effort to teach the nominative absolute to sixth
graders.  It is my understanding that children of that age throughout
the history of education, until very recent times, were able to learn
grammar at that level of difficulty.

It seems to me that your definition, copied below, is accurate.

>there is a very simple
> independent clause and some sort of dependent clause,
> although lacking a subordinate conjunction.

The nominative absolute is lacking a conjunction to attach it to the
rest of the sentence.  That seems to be a defining feature of
absolute modifiers versus specific modifiers.

The nominative absolute also is kind of like a dependent clause.

That seems right to me, except that it is not quite a full clause
because the verb is truncated, i.e., it is turned into a participle
because the auxiliary is removed.

Also, what Amy Benjamin says is a good way of looking at it:

>refer to this structure [nominative absolute] as a noun plus a
>participle (ing or ed word).

Amy's example of a nominative absolute, i.e., "its nose buried," is
a noun plus an -ed word.  And "Feathers fluttering" is a noun plus
an -ing word.

In both examples, there would be an actual clause if the verb was
complete with an auxiliary, i.e., if "buried" was complete with an
auxiliary ("was buried") and if "fluttering" was also a complete verb:
"its nose was buried;" "Feathers were fluttering."

>The raccoon, its nose buried in the garbage, ignored us when we
>opened the garage door. Feathers fluttering, the canary flew out of
>its cage.

How does one go about teaching this sort of thing to sixth graders?

Well, that's something for Amy and Sharon to tell us, since they do
it.  However, it seems to me that one would collect many many
examples of the nominative absolute, and carefully exclude any
possible distractions in the grammatical structures.  One would
then teach them to "look for a noun plus an -ed or -ing word," as
Amy says.  And then one would give the students some definite
instructions (as for example "circle the noun and underling the -ed
or -ing word.  But do NOT circle or underline anything if there is an
actual verb there.  Then bracket the whole piece [nominative
absolutes]."

In other words, worksheets!

Does this sort of thing work in a sixth grade class?

I hope so.  Will those with first hand experience verify this for us?


-----------------------------------------------------
Sincerely, Robert Einarsson
please visit me at
www.artsci.gmcc.ab.ca/people/einarssonb

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