The best I can find in Quirk, and I think it's a match, is in
15.60, where they give the example

They stood silently, their eyes fixed on the horizon.

The refer to this as a Supplementive Adverbial Clause: ". . . the
supplementive clause implies an accompanying circumstance to the
situation described in the matrix clause."

Herb Stahlke

>>> [log in to unmask] 12/04/00 10:08AM >>>
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

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/