"The cowboy walked down the street, trailing a roll of toilet paper."
Doesn't this phrase become restrictive if I were to say:
         The cowboy trailing a roll of toilet paper walked down the street.
...where I'd assume that umpteen cowboys might be walking but only trails the
paper.
. . . as opposed to:
Tex, trailing a roll of toilet paper, walked down the street.
.. . . where I'd assume that with the proper name "Tex" I've already restricted
sufficiently whom I'm discussing and so provide the phrase as added information.

        Roaring, the hurricane came through the town.
        Racing down the stairs, my son came to greet his dad.
These commas seem not to be related to restrictive/non-restrictive matters.
Preposed to the sentence, any phrase would be marked off with a comma, wouldn't
it?

==Just wondering, Reinhold

Wanda VanGoor wrote:

> On Fri, 5 Nov 1999, Michael Kischner wrote:
>
> > "The unpainted house stood on the hill, seeming deserted."
> >
> > "The cowboy walked down the street, trailing a roll of toilet paper."
> >
> > The participle phrase at the end of each of the two sentences above is
> > nonrestrictive.  Nonrestrictive participle phrases are set off by commas.
> > Therefore, the two participle phrases are set off by commas.  But
> > something in me wants to strike those commas.  I gues my reasoning would
> > be that in these cases the participle phrases are set off by intervening
> > words and are therefore not in danger of seeming restrictive as they would
> > if they were right next to the nouns they modify.  (Whether they really
> > modify those nouns is another question; they seem so adverbial.)
> >
> Michael, I share your impulse!  However, I have much more trouble with
> sentences like these:
>         The hurricane came roaring through the town.
>
>         My son came racing down the stairs to greet his dad.
>
> To me, these are clearly adverbial; they tell HOW the hurricane and
> my son "came."   (A few years back, a handbook came out that actually let
> us diagram such Ving phrases as modifying the verb--but there was a new
> edition the very next year in which that interpretation did NOT appear!)
> If I move them to the beginning of the sentence, however, they seem
> clearly adjectival:
>
>         Roaring, the hurricane came through the town.
>
>         Racing down the stairs, my son came to greet his dad.
>
> And they need commas, but I don't think it's because they are
> non-restrictive!