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 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/