Craig, I find it difficult to shoehorn absolutes into any category that works well for other kinds of constructions; they're a bit analogous to the duck-billed platypus. I think, though, that only your last example involves a "canonical" absolute - the traditional definition requires the verb form to be a present or past participle, and the structure as a whole can't be acting as a subject or object in any sense (the lack of a standard grammatical relation between the construction and the rest of the sentence was the motivation for using the label "absolute"). Whether or not I (or anyone else) *calls* the structures in your first two examples absolutes or not, though, they're much more common in English than canonical absolutes are. I *would* treat them as nonfinite clauses, rather than as nonfinite predicates with an extra something up front, and I'd treat a canonical absolute the same way. Now I'm stuck trying to figure out how to cast the difference between the canonical absolutes and these other things. They're a kind of nonfinite complement clause, whereas an absolute is also nonfinite, but isn't a complement. I suppose absolutes could be treated as nonfinite adverbial clauses, but I'm always want to start checking myself when I slap the "adverbial" label on something -- it's the "none of the above" category. Bill Spruiell Dept. of English Central Michigan University -----Original Message----- From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 9:15 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Clauses vs. phrases Bill, How do you deal with absolutes? Or instances when they could be thought of as subject bearing? "I watched my father waste away from cancer." "She felt the wind grow stronger." "Their legs dangling down, they rode in the boxcar door." Are these clauses missing just the finite marker? I think what bothers me more than anything is when absolutes are called "phrases." Diana Hacker, in the most recent Writer's Reference, calls them "a noun phrase followed by a participial phrase." Trying to hold on to these traditional categories can stimulate goofy descriptions. Craig Spruiell, William C wrote: > Until the early twentieth century, people who wrote grammar books tended > to use terms like "phrase" and "clause" rather unsystematically -- they > were descriptive labels, but not precisely defined ones. The way the > terms are used in U.S. K-12 education is the result of a consensus that > developed among educators on this side of the Atlantic, but it's not a > universal consensus. A good many Commonwealth grammarians (for example, > many in the Systemics approach, but certainly not limited to it), use > "group" for what most Statesiders would call a phrase (basically, any > phrase that all of us would view as endocentric is a "group," but an > arguably-exocentric constituent without a predicate is a "phrase," with > the prepositional phrase being the prime example). Similarly, the > requirement that a clause have a subject and finite verb is part of the > consensus that developed here, but not elsewhere. > > I like to view gerunds, infinitives, etc. as kinds of *predicates* -- > but that's based on an approach in which the clause has three, rather > than two, major constituents: subject, finite marker, and predicate. I > derived that from SFL, but there are analogues in other modern > approaches and there are certainly historical precedents for that > tripartite division. It's not part of the K-12 consensus, though, such > that it is, so I don't harp on it much in my pedagogic grammar classes. > > Bill Spruiell > Dept. of English > Central Michigan University > > 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/