Ablativus absolutus, if you're more Latin-oriented.

==Reinhold

"Richard Veit, UNCW English Department" wrote:
>
> At 02:22 AM 12/04/2000 -0500, Ed Vavra wrote:
>
> > Question: Is the following sentence an example of a comma-splice, or
> > an
> > example of a well-written sentence?
> >
> > My dog moaned, its tail stuck between its back legs.
>
> That's a pretty standard example of a "nominative absolute." That's
> the term I learned in grade school in the fifties and find indexed in
> Roberts' 1954 Understanding Grammar. The term "absolute" is used in
> several more recent grammar texts, but neither term is indexed in
> Greenbaum's Oxford English Grammar. Curious minds wanting to know, is
> there other terminology for such constructions?
>
> Dick Veit

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