John, "The girls marched around the oval, dressed in pretty frocks" is
perfectly sound: The ambiguty you say it contains is simply not there: the
comma sees to that. It would be there if Paul's example sentence had been
written without a comma. (But it wasn't, so it isn't.)

The structural legitimacy of Paul's sentence is in this: "The girls marched
around the oval" is the leading, independent sentence to which the
foreshortened sentence "dressed in pretty frocks" (The girls were dressed in
pretty frocks) attaches with a comma. I.e.: the shared subjects of two
independent sentences enable their comma splicing.

Your sentence: "Digging in the garden, a brooch was found" does not have the
`two independent sentences/shared subjects' condition that enables a
splicing comma . Rather, its splicing comma attaches a present-particple
sequence (which foreshortened the sentence `X/Xs was/were digging in the
garden') that acts like an adjective. Doing that, it necessarily describes
the only available noun: `brooch'.

To avoid the untintended meaning this achieves, your sentence needs a
two-subject construction, one of which acts adverbially: `While the men were
digging in the garden a brooch was found'. (A comma can, but need not,
follow `garden'.)

Sophie Johnson
at ENGLISH  GRAMMAR TUTOR
http://www.englishgrammartutor.com/
[log in to unmask]
----- Original Message -----
From: john kinny-lewis <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 12:50 PM
Subject: Re: Webclass


> Thank you Paul,
>
>
>
> This is ambiguous because it implies that the oval is "dressed in pretty
> frocks".
>
> So are they both incorrect?
>
> Thanks for the input!
>
> Cheers,
>
> John
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Paul E. Doniger
> Sent: Thursday, 26 July 2001 12:48
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Webclass
>
>
> John,
>
> The website looks interesting and is fun to play around in, but you should
> know that the following sentence is NOT correct (your "English Game" says
it
> is correct): "Digging in the garden, a brooch was found."
>
> The sentence contains a 'dangling modifier' -- who exactly IS digging in
the
> garden? This sentence suggests it was a brooch, which could only be true
in
> a magical situation.
>
> The correct sentence in this part of the game should have been: "The girls
> marched around the oval, dressed in pretty frocks."
>
> Keep on plugging!
>
> Paul E. Doniger
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: john kinny-lewis <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 8:53 PM
> Subject: Webclass
>
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > My name is John Kinny-Lewis.
> >
> > I have just launched a new version of my old site.
> >
> > The address is http://www.webclass.asn.au
> >
> > It is an educational site which includes english grammar.
> >
> > Any feedback would be appreciated, particularly 'typos'.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > John
> >
> > To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
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> >
> > Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> >
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
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