| 词组 | absolute phrases |
| 释义 | absolute phrases A participial phrase that is not overtly connected to the rest of the sentence is called an absolute phrase or absolute construction. Quirk et al. 1985 uses the term absolute clause but extends the class to include constructions from which the participle has been omitted. Absolute phrases may contain either a past or present participle. An absolute phrase has a head, usually a noun or pronoun, which the participle modifies. We may think of it as the subject of the phrase. The subject of the absolute phrase and that of the sentence are always different: • The scholars increasing fast, the house was soon found too small —Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, 1788 • Miss Ward's match, indeed ... was not contemptible, Sir Thomas being happily able to give his friend an income —Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814 • But I don't believe that any writer under thirty— geniuses excepted—can stay writing in the attic forever without drying up —Joan Aiken, The Writer, May 1968 If the subject of what would otherwise be an absolute phrase is suppressed as though it were the same as that of the main clause, a dangling participle results. Here are two excerpts from a speech of Richard M. Nixon (quoted by William Safire, N.Y. Times Mag., 19 June 1983) that illustrate the problem. In the first example, both subjects are the same —I— and the phrase is properly attached to the clause; in the second, they are different—I and tendency—and connection is not made: the phrase dangles: • Speaking candidly, I believe some of our Chinese friends have misunderstood and misjudged President Reagan's position on the Taiwan issue. • Speaking as an old friend, there has been a disturbing tendency in statements emanating from Peking to question the good faith of President Reagan.... See dangling modifiers. Perrin & Ebbitt 1972 point out that absolute phrases, when short, are direct and economical; and that when they follow the main clause, they are a convenient way to add details. Reader's Digest 1983 warns that absolute phrases with a pronoun subject (as "he having gone on ahead") are often felt to be awkward or old-fashioned. A number of absolute phrases have been so frequently used that they are now fixed phrases: • No, my friends, I go (always, other things being equal) for the man who inherits family traditions — Oliver Wendell Holmes d. 1894, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858 • I suggest that the university's most feasible function, all things considered, is essentially what it has been for nearly a millennium now —Robert A. Nisbet, Psychology Today, March 1971 • So, beyond the damage to the front end, the valves had to be reground. It came to $350 all told —Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days, 1985 |
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