John,

 As usual, I particularly enjoy Herb's perspective here (although I also appreciate the different ways in which others have approached this sentence -- it reminds me that there is no single, perfect answer).

   "Running from the back of his skull down to the front is a patch of white hair that opens up into his lips."

   If, as Herb suggests (as I understood it), the phrase in subject position here is an adjectival participle, then I have another question. Does this "bend" the basic tenant/tendency in English for there to be a nominal in subject position? Or do we say that the phrase is both adjectival and nominal in function (even though the phrase doesn't seem to act/"feel" much like a noun phrase and is nominal only in the sense that it is in subject position)? Have syntax studies shown this to be a common pattern in English? I can't seem to find a reference for participle phrases functioning nominally/in subject position. Our own Martha Kolln deals with participles strictly as adjectivals in her Understanding English Grammar.

  Sorry for so many questions, but I am intrigued (aren't we a peculiar bunch to be intrigued by such things!). Thanks!

         Jed Dews

"Stahlke, Herbert F.W." <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

A fascinating sentence, both image and structure, and an interesting set of analyses. So let's try another one. It's an existential sentence in which the original verb phrase becomes a participial phrase and replaces the subject "there", with a derivation, for those of us who like derivations, something like this:

A patch of white hair that opens up into his lips runs from the back of his skull down to the front.

Since English tends! to avoid indefinites in subject position, this sentence is better expressed as the existential

There is a patch of white hair that opens up into his lips, running from the back of his skull down to the front. (I put in a comma simply to avoid confusion with running lips (sink ships?).)

This writer then has cleverly moved the participial phrase into subject position, maybe because some teacher once said not to start a sentence with "there is", giving us

Running from the back of his skull down to the front is a patch of white hair that opens up into his lips.

The reasons for considering it an existential sentence are the indefinite postposed subject and the copula, further supported by the otherwise anomalous participial phrase subject.

The comma, I think, is unrelated to any of this. Rather, there is a tendency among inexperienced writers, and experienced ones as well, to insert a comma between a long subject and the verb.

Herb


A ! student wrote the following sentence in an essay:

Running from the back of his skull down to the front, is a patch of white
hair that opens up into his lips.
The comma doesn't belong there, but I'm not sure why. Is the "Running"
phrase a gerund? If so, then I understand why the comma is wrong: it
separates the subject from the verb However, the phrase doesn't behave like
a gerund. Compare:

Running around the lake is a part of my daily routine. --> It is a part of
my daily routine. --> A part of my daily routine is running around the
lake.

In this sentence, the "Running" phrase behaves like a true noun phrase in a
linking verb sentence. My student's "Running" phrase doesn't behave like an
NP. It feels participial, modifying "patch". If so, then the comma would
be correct. But it's not.

Any ideas out there?

John

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John E. Dews

Instructor, Undergraduate Linguistics

MA-TESOL/Applied Linguistics Program

Educator, Secondary English Language Arts

English Department, 208 Rowand-Johnson Hall (Office)

University of Alabama

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