There is a source of confusion here, namely the fact that the past
participle and past tense form of 'fix' look exactly the same. What we
have in this absolute phrase is the past participle, not the past tense;
hence the difficulty making it into a finite clause.

The way to make clear that a reduced clause is nonfinite is to put it
into several frames that show that it is not the reduced clause that
indicates the time at which the event or state (fixing) occurred, but
rather a tensed verb elsewhere in the sentence:

"I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her fingers"
"I am standing still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her fingers"
"I will stand still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her fingers"

The fixedness of attention is located in time by the tense/aspect of the
sentence's main verb, not by the participle 'fixed'.

Nonfinite means 'not marked for tense'. A nonfinite clause, reduced or
not, may show _aspect_ (whether the action of the verb is ongoing (-ing)
or completed (-ed,-en)), but it will not show tense. Tense refers to the
point in time that the described action took place relative to the
moment of speaking. That is independent of aspect, which concerns only
the 'scan' of the verb, as under way or finished or neither (infinitive).

It's very important to separate tense from aspect in teaching about verb
forms and tense/aspect constructions in English.

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Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-259
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •  Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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"Understanding is a lot like sex; it's got a practical purpose,
but that's not why people do it normally"  -            Frank  Oppenheimer
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