【语法忽悠】Verbs and Verbals (8) / 四六文摘

语法忽悠

下面三讲想要说清楚英文Verbals的一种特殊用法。这一用法的英文名称是Dangling Modifiers，中文译名有些忘了，是独立结构吧? 如果不对请有心人给改一下。二十五年前在国内读语法时学过，从老师到学生都糊涂，近期也见到有人解释这一语法现象，但还是觉得模棱两可隔靴搔痒。不过用不好Dangling Modifiers这错误你我都犯过，别不好意思。在这儿告诉你个悄悄话，这样的错误在美国恐怕上至总统教授下到平民百姓都犯，它属于不规范语法的通病之一。

不过也别被我唬住了，正确使用Verbal Modifers其实也不难，只要懂得掌握在句子中什么成分可以省什么不可以省(更准确地说是什么该省什么不该)。

Have you heard of the term "dangling modifier" of English grammar? If you do, do you fully understand it and know how to correctly use it?

First let me set up a small test for fun:

Sentence 1: After eating dinner, the sunset was so gorgeous that we decided to sit on the peaceful riverbank to enjoy the twilight before the movie started.

Sentence 2: After eating dinner, we noticed the gorgeous sunset and decided to sit on the peaceful riverbank to enjoy the twilight.

Is there anything wrong with either of the sentence? I can tell you that there is serious but typical mistake here. But can you locate the mistake and correct it?

Sentence 3: Having finished the reading, the teacher started to ask questions.

Sentence 4: Students having finished the required reading, the teacher started to ask questions.

Is there anything wrong with these two sentences? If yes, find errors and correct them. If not, can you explain the difference between them grammatically?

Tricky, isn't it? Would that motivate you to do an effective study session on "dangling modifier"?

Here it is. Dangling modifier is a persistent and frequent grammatical problem in writing. It is often (though not always) located at the beginning of a sentence. It is usually a phrase or an elliptical clause ("elliptical" means the subject and verb of the dependent clause are skipped rather than expressed). It (usually) functions as an adjective but does not modify any specific word in the sentence, or (worse) modifies the wrong word.

So the problem is that dangling phrase is a word or phrase that modifies a word (or a concept or an object) that is not clearly stated in the sentence.

The dangling modifiers we discuss in this section is a "-ing" verbal phrase[1]. It states an action but does not name the doer of the action. There are two kinds of dangling modifiers with the "-ing" form I'll describe in the following:

First Kind:

The doer (subject) of the dangling action (verb), most of the time, must be the subject of the main verb(s). That is, the subject of the sentence[2] must be the doer of both the main verb and the dangling verbal phrase. So, look at the first two sentences again:

Sentence 1: After eating dinner, the sunset was so gorgeous that we decided to sit on the peaceful riverbank to enjoy the twilight before the movie started.

Sentence 2: After eating dinner, we noticed the gorgeous sunset and decided to sit on the peaceful riverbank to enjoy the twilight.

The first sentence is grammatically incorrect (unless the sunset could eat dinner). The error is that the doer of the dangling verb (eating) is not the subject of the main verb (was), since the sunset cannot eat the dinner.

The second sentence is correct, not only grammatically, but in practical sense as well, since the doer of the dangling phrase is the subject of the main verb: we first ate, then noticed …

Now we take a closer look at the sentences 3 and 4:

Sentence 3: Having finished the required reading, the teacher started to ask questions.

Sentence 4: Students having finished the required reading, the teacher started to ask questions.

Obviously, sentence 3 is a correct one: the teacher did the reading first, then started to ask question... (BTW, Having finished the reading = After finishing the reading). However, sentence 4 is considered correct one, too, but how do we interpret Sentence 4? That leads us to the second kind of "-ing" dangling modifier.

Second Kind:

If the doer of the dangling phrase is not the subject of the main verb in the sentence, there is a way to fix such a mismatch: just add the doer of the "-ing" dangling phrase explicitly in front of the dangling phrase. With this second kind of "-ing" dangling phrase, we can see that Sentence 4 makes a perfect sense: students finished the required reading first, then the teacher started to ask them questions.[3]

Now, try the following sentences. Some of them are correct; others are incorrect and need to be corrected.

Sentence 5: Having finished the assignment, the T.V. was turned on.

It's an incorrect one, since the T.V. can't be the doer of "having finished..." The correct one should be: "Having finished the assignment, the boy turned on the T.V." or "the boy having finished the assignment, the T.V. was turned on (an absolute phrase is used)". The first correction expresses that the boy finished the assignment first, then he turned on the T.V., while the second corrected one states that the boy finished the assignment before the T.V. was turned on (the difference here is that we neither specified nor cared who turned on the T.V., while in the first corrected sentence, the doer of the dangling turned on the T.V. himself).

Sentence 6: After reading the original study, the article remains unconvincing.

Again, the grammatical mistake is the mismatch between the doer of the dangling and the subject of the main verb.

two corrections are possible:

1. After reading the original study, I find the article unconvincing.

2. After me (or my) reading the original study, the article remains unconvincing.

In this example, the first correction was clear: "I read the study, and then I was still unconvinced", while the second correction states, I read the study already, but the article was still not unconvincing (I may or may not be convinced, but others are certainly not.). Here, we put "me" instead of "I" in front of "reading the original..." since it follows the preposition "after". Equivalent sentence can be: I (or my) having read the original study, the article remains unconvincing.

Sentence 7:

Having relieved of your responsibilities at your job, your home should be a place of relax.

Incorrectness: "your home" cannot relive of your responsibilities

Again, there can be two correction:

1. Having relieved of your responsibility at your job, you should be able to relax at home.

2. You having relieved of your responsibilities at your job, your home should be a place of relax.

Do you get it now? I hope you do. Try to interpret these two sentences on your own.

Dangling phrase can also be put at the end of a sentence:

They failed the experiment, not having studied the lab manual.

Read a couple of more:

Having arrived late for practice, she needed to show a written excuse.

Not knowing his name, Maria had difficult time introducing this play.

In summary, there are several types of dangling phrases (besides the "ing" form, other types of dangling phrases will be discussed later). In most cases, dangling phrases suggest but do not name the doer. Dangling phrases are often found at the beginning of sentences and cause readers to expect the subject of the main sentence to be the doer of the dangling phrase. When the dangling doer mismatches the sentence subject, problem occurs.

The source of the problem is: English has a convention to omit unnecessary parts to keep a sentence as compact as possible, so long as no confusion occurs. So, when the sentence "while Larry was sitting in classroom, Larry fell asleep" is rewritten as "while sitting in classroom, Larry fell asleep", no confusion is generated by omitting the "Larry was" part of the "while" phrase. Readers following such English convention would expect that the skipped doer (Larry) would be the subject of the main sentence. That is why we say that, if the implicit (skipped) doer of the dangling phrase is not the subject of the main sentence, problem occurs.

So, the dangling modifier as the introductive adjective phrase, because of its position, is supposed to automatically modify the first noun or pronoun that follows the dangling phrase (i.e., the subject of the main verb(s)). If such a connection is illogical, problem occurs, as in “after eating dinner, the sunset was so gorgeous that we decided to sit on the peaceful riverbank to enjoy the twilight before the movie started” (because the sunset cannot eat dinner).

A note on conventional dangling phrase or absolute phrase, which one to use? First try to use a conventional dangling phrase (where the omitted dangling doer is the subject of the main clause) as much as you can. Try not to use the absolute phrase unless you have to:

1. Having relieved of your responsibility at your job, you should be able to relax at home (good English). 2. You having relieved of your responsibilities at your job, your home should be a place of relax (awkward English).

After reading both of these two sentences, you should have a feeling that the first sentence is smooth, while the second sentence is awkward in spite of being grammatically correct.

[1] Dangling modifier can take forms other than “-ing”. See the Note on dangling modifiers (2). If you are not familiar with the term “verbal”, then see the Note on Verbs v. Verbals.

[2] Call it main clause, if you like.

[3] Such a dangling modifiers with its own subject is grammatically called “absolute phrase”. An absolute phrase consists of a verbal and the verbal’s doer (or call it verbal’s subject, if you like). See Note on Absolute Phrase.