’Angry, he didn't say anything’

I, too, am waiting for the experts' answers.

I did some googling and found these examples:

1. Jill, ecstatic, accepted the invitation.

2. Ecstatic, Jill accepted the invitation.

Source on the Web: Commas at the beginning of sentences The Editor's Blog

1,

Hi, Deepcosmos and TheParser,

@deepcosmos posted:

1. I’ve found the sentence 1) in a thread of The G/Exchange and 2), 3) in CaGEL (by Huddlestone) with the names for this construction - ‘predicative adjuncts in front position’ (by CaGEL), ‘fronted subject-oriented secondary predicate’ (by Seiichi MYOGA).

1) Unhurt, Tom escaped from the accident. (= Tom escaped from the accident (and he was) unhurt.)

2) Furious, he stormed out of the room.

3) Upset, the children had daubed paint on the walls. (‘upset’ is in predicative function, with the subject the children as predicand: the sentence entails that ‘the children had been upset’.) (CaGEL p.530)

Please notice that sentence (1) should be paraphrased differently:

- Tom was unhurt and escaped from the accident. (Being unhurt is a preceding, not a subsequent condition.)

@deepcosmos posted:

2. Meantime, I’ve found the sentences below in a few local text books, which explains the ‘being’ could be omitted in the ‘adverbial participle clause’. I think they without ‘being’ are all ungrammatical in the view of ‘adverbial participle clause’. However, I wonder if they’re grammatical in the view of ‘predicative adjuncts in front position’;

4) Angry, he didn't say anything.

5) Afraid, the girl can hardly sleep.

6) Dead, he seemed more approachable to her.

7) Worried, the king gave Elsa a pair of leather gloves.

8) Unemployed, he doesn't have much money.

I agree that at least some of the sentences above would sound more natural with "being," but I don't think they are ungrammatical without it. I think context can help justify the position of those fronted adjectives. In my opinion, it's a question of style rather than grammar.

@TheParser posted:

1. Jill, ecstatic, accepted the invitation.

2. Ecstatic, Jill accepted the invitation.

Yes, those sound fine, though I prefer (2).

I think that some adjectives will sound better if included in a longer phrase, for example:

- Afraid of the dark, the girl can hardly sleep.

- Unemployed and with nobody to fall back on, he finds it hard to survive.

@Gustavo, Co-Moderator posted:

Hi, Deepcosmos and TheParser,

Please notice that sentence (1) should be paraphrased differently:

- Tom was unhurt and escaped from the accident. (Being unhurt is a preceding, not a subsequent condition.)

I agree that at least some of the sentences above would sound more natural with "being," but I don't think they are ungrammatical without it. I think context can help justify the position of those fronted adjectives. In my opinion, it's a question of style rather than grammar.

Yes, those sound fine, though I prefer (2).

I think that some adjectives will sound better if included in a longer phrase, for example:

- Afraid of the dark, the girl can hardly sleep.

- Unemployed and with nobody to fall back on, he finds it hard to survive.

Hi, Gustavo, deeply appreciate your support as always.

Thankful for such helpful information, I send my best wishes to you, Gustavo.

Greetings! This is another challenging topic. I'd like to thank TheParser and Gustavo for their informative postings here, and Deepcosmos for asking another deep question about English grammar.

This topic dovetails nicely with (and, I suspect, may have been partially inspired by) Rasha's recent question about clause-initial past participles, which are often preceded with "being" (or "having been")—but sometimes aren't.

After writing my little essay in Rasha's thread, I came upon a sentence that seemed, at first sight, to problematize my account. The sentence appeared in a Facebook group devoted to Reed-Kellogg diagramming:

• Covered in sweat, she arrived home and fell onto the sofa.

The woman who runs that Facebook group answered the question by diagramming "covered in sweat" straightforwardly as a past participle underneath "she," the subject of the sentence.

Notice there is no passive or conditional meaning to "covered in sweat" in that sentence; "covered in sweat" is purely descriptive. How can I accommodate such a case into my account of sentence-initial past-participle phrases?

I propose to do so by treating "covered in sweat" as a fronted predicate appositive, a term of George Curme's which was initially brought to my attention by GrammarFan, whom TheParser may remember.   Compare:

• She arrived home covered in sweat, and fell onto the sofa.
• She arrived home sad and went straight to bed.

Notice that the predicate-appositive sentences allow phrases that parallel those applicable to sentences quasi-copulative verbs, another topic that I historically discussed with GrammarFan:

• She arrived home covered in sweat.
  = She was covered in sweat when she arrived home.

That is the type of paraphrase that I think applies to some of Deepcosmos's specimens, but not to all of them; and those specimens of his to which it does not apply do not seem to me to work (well).

• Angry, he didn't say anything.
  = He didn't say anything when angry.
    (NOT: He didn't say anything [at that moment], because he was angry.)
• Afraid, the girl can hardly sleep.
  = The girl can hardly sleep afraid.
  = The girl can hardly sleep when afraid.
  (NOT: The girl can hardly sleep [right now], because she is afraid.)

I don't have time to perform this type of analysis on all of the examples before us in this thread, but, by trying this approach on the sentences I haven't spoken of, you will be able to figure out which ones I don't think work!

Lastly, I should make a couple of footnotes. First, there are cases of "appositive adjectives" (a term I take from Paul Roberts's Understanding Grammar, 1954), and my fronted-predicate-appositive analysis does not apply to them.

• "Old and moldy, the egg was set before us" (Roberts, p. 94).

Roberts comments: "In the appositive position, the adjective seldom occurs alone. That is, we are not likely to say, "An egg, old, was set before us" (ibid.). But when a conjunct adjective is added or the phrase is expanded, it can be OK.

The second footnote I'd like to make is that my fronted-predicate-appositive analysis should not be understood to apply to sentences with (central) quasi-copulative verbs, even if they are special cases of the predicate appositive:

• Kim married young.
• *Young, Kim married.
• Jesse died poor.
• *Poor, Jesse died.

Deepcosmos, I realize that you have borrowed hyper-modern terminology from Seichii Myoga and The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. If you'd like me to nest my account in Huddleston and Pullum's terminology, and see whether anything they say contradicts what I have said in this thread and the other, I shall have to turn this into a month-long research project, which I may or may not have time to pursue, depending on how much unpaid time I can spare for it.

Here's a piece of advice I'll end with: When in doubt, use normal word order!

@David, Moderator posted:

• Angry, he didn't say anything.
  = He didn't say anything when angry.
  (NOT: He didn't say anything [at that moment], because he was angry.)
• Afraid, the girl can hardly sleep.
  = The girl can hardly sleep afraid.
  = The girl can hardly sleep when afraid.
  (NOT: The girl can hardly sleep [right now], because she is afraid.)

Thank you, David, for your great analysis above. While I see there is a temporal component in the sentences above, I always thought there was a causative element too:

Furious, he stormed out of the room. (He was furious when he stormed out of the room / He stormed out of the room because he was furious.)

Afraid, the girl can hardly sleep. (When she feels afraid, the girl can hardly sleep / The girl can hardly sleep because of her fear.)

@deepcosmos posted:

Hello, everyone,

1. I’ve found the sentence 1) in a thread of The G/Exchange and 2), 3) in CaGEL (by Huddlestone) with the names for this construction - ‘predicative adjuncts in front position’ (by CaGEL), ‘fronted subject-oriented secondary predicate’ (by Seiichi MYOGA).

1) Unhurt, Tom escaped from the accident. (= Tom escaped from the accident (and he was) unhurt.)

2) Furious, he stormed out of the room.

3) Upset, the children had daubed paint on the walls. (‘upset’ is in predicative function, with the subject the children as predicand: the sentence entails that ‘the children had been upset’.) (CaGEL p.530)

2. Meantime, I’ve found the sentences below in a few local text books, which explains the ‘being’ could be omitted in the ‘adverbial participle clause’. I think they without ‘being’ are all ungrammatical in the view of ‘adverbial participle clause’. However, I wonder if they’re grammatical in the view of ‘predicative adjuncts in front position’;

4) Angry, he didn't say anything.

5) Afraid, the girl can hardly sleep.

6) Dead, he seemed more approachable to her.

7) Worried, the king gave Elsa a pair of leather gloves.

8) Unemployed, he doesn't have much money.

Would appreciate on your kind explanation.

The type of construction you cite is fine, as you've learned from CGEL and other grammars, so I'm not entirely certain what your concern is or what kind of explanation you're seeking.

The term 'predicative adjunct', as adopted about twenty years ago by CGEL, is perfectly appropriate for it by virtue of the fact that it neatly describes how the predicative/non-predicative contrast cuts across that between complements and adjuncts in such constructions. In other words, they are predicative because they relate to a predicand, and adjuncts by virtue of being supplements (as opposed to modifiers).

Note that they are not restricted to front position, cf. The editor, angry at the delay,resigned from the project.

Funnily enough, I recall discussing this topic with Rodney Huddleston some years ago when I asked him about the extent of predicative adjuncts. Briefly, what he said was that they although they most often consist of of adjective phrases, they are not restricted to them. You can also have preposition phrases:

In a bad temper, as usual, John walked on ahead of the main party.

and noun phrases:

A proud teetotaller, John stuck to water while the others drank champagne.

I think the term 'predicative adjunct' is useful for the kind of phrases under discussion. I don't see any reason not to use it where appropriate.

@TheParser posted:

Thankful for such helpful information, I send my best wishes to you, Gustavo.

Hello, TheParser, really glad to see you on this 'Grammar Exchange'. I guess you're the same member who has been working on 'UsingEnglish.com'. I still remember your explanations helped me a lot, since you've made  mainly in view of the traditional grammar. I would hope to see your more postings here in the near future.

@David, Moderator posted:

That is the type of paraphrase that I think applies to some of Deepcosmos's specimens, but not to all of them; and those specimens of his to which it does not apply do not seem to me to work (well).

• Angry, he didn't say anything.
  = He didn't say anything when angry.
    (NOT: He didn't say anything [at that moment], because he was angry.)
• Afraid, the girl can hardly sleep.
  = The girl can hardly sleep afraid.
  = The girl can hardly sleep when afraid.
  (NOT: The girl can hardly sleep [right now], because she is afraid.)

I don't have time to perform this type of analysis on all of the examples before us in this thread, but, by trying this approach on the sentences I haven't spoken of, you will be able to figure out which ones I don't think work!

Lastly, I should make a couple of footnotes. First, there are cases of "appositive adjectives" (a term I take from Paul Roberts's Understanding Grammar, 1954), and my fronted-predicate-appositive analysis does not apply to them.

• "Old and moldy, the egg was set before us" (Roberts, p. 94).

Roberts comments: "In the appositive position, the adjective seldom occurs alone. That is, we are not likely to say, "An egg, old, was set before us" (ibid.). But when a conjunct adjective is added or the phrase is expanded, it can be OK.

The second footnote I'd like to make is that my fronted-predicate-appositive analysis should not be understood to apply to sentences with (central) quasi-copulative verbs, even if they are special cases of the predicate appositive:

• Kim married young.
• *Young, Kim married.
• Jesse died poor.
• *Poor, Jesse died.

Hi, David, really appreciate your valuable time sharing to my inquiry.

@David, Moderator posted:

Deepcosmos, I realize that you have borrowed hyper-modern terminology from Seichii Myoga and The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. If you'd like me to nest my account in Huddleston and Pullum's terminology, and see whether anything they say contradicts what I have said in this thread and the other, I shall have to turn this into a month-long research project, which I may or may not have time to pursue, depending on how much unpaid time I can spare for it.

Here's a piece of advice I'll end with: When in doubt, use normal word order!

David, that isn't really what I mean. The deeper I dive into grammar, the more difficult problems I meet, because there are many parsing methods available for the same issue and too many terminologies in them to the same grammatical factor according to the specialists, causing continuous confusion to this EFL learner. Thus, I'm always relying on this G/Exchange to be informed of the prevailing theory about grammar in the mainstream. I'm genuinely curious about grammar itself and have no intention to give burdens to all of you here at all.

@billj posted:

The term 'predicative adjunct', as adopted about twenty years ago by CGEL, is perfectly appropriate for it by virtue of the fact that the predicative/non-predicative contrast cuts across that between complements and adjuncts. In other words, they are predicative because they relate to a predicand, and adjuncts by virtue of being supplements (as opposed to modifiers).

Note that they are not restricted to front position, cf. The editor, angry at the delay,resigned from the project.

Funnily enough, I recall discussing this topic with Rodney Huddleston some years ago when I asked him about the extent of predicative adjuncts. Briefly, what he said was that they although they most often consist of of adjective phrases, they are not restricted to them. You can also have preposition phrases:

In a bad temper, as usual, John walked on ahead of the main party.

and noun phrases:

A proud teetotaller, John stuck to water while the others drank champagne.

Hi, BillJ, sincerely appreciate your sharing of fine explanation. I newly learned what you told.

@David, Moderator

Hi, David, I admit this G/E's explanations have really been a final resort and also a wonderful handbook to me for long time. When I focus on CaGEL (by Huddleston) in a hour only, frankly I immediately get a throbbing headache due to its too difficult terminologies as well as its contents.

@deepcosmos posted:

Hello, TheParser, really glad to see you on this 'Grammar Exchange'. I guess you're the same member who has been working on 'UsingEnglish.com'. I still remember your explanations helped me a lot, since you've made  mainly in view of the traditional grammar. I would hope to see your more postings here in the near future.

Nice hearing from you. A few years back, I regularly posted on Grammar Exchange. I still have fond memories interacting with David and all the moderators and members at that time. It really was one big happy family, as it  still is!

@deepcosmos posted:

Hi, David, I admit this G/E's explanations has really been a last resort and also a wonderful handbook to me for long time. When I focus on CaGEL (by Huddleston) in a hour only, frankly I immediately get a throbbing headache due to its too difficult terminologies as well as its contents.

Well, don't use it then. No one is forcing you to. CGEL is not intended as a user-guide for learners, but primarily as a reference for grammarians and linguists.

Find another grammar that you can relate to.

How ironic the title of this thread is in view of the course it has taken! I could easily edit "he" to "I" and "didn't say" to "shouldn't say" or "shouldn't have said." BillJ, I sincerely regret having offended you in this thread and have deleted the offending post and your reply to it. Please check your Hotmail account.

CGEL (i.e., The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, by Huddleston and Pullum, two of the finest linguists now living) is an outstanding grammar worthy of careful study by very advanced students of English grammar, who should not feel discouraged by my preference for other other grammars.

@deepcosmos posted:

Hi, David, I admit this G/E's explanations have really been a final resort and also a wonderful handbook to me for long time. When I focus on CaGEL (by Huddleston) in a hour only, frankly I immediately get a throbbing headache due to its too difficult terminologies as well as its contents.

Hello, everyone, regretfully I was confused to choose the proper word in that sentence above. So, I now corrected it into 'a final resort'. And please note that my first feeling on CaGEL above has been got as one of the EFL learners.

@Gustavo, Co-Moderator posted:

Thank you, David, for your great analysis above. While I see there is a temporal component in the sentences above, I always thought there was a causative element too:

Furious, he stormed out of the room. (He was furious when he stormed out of the room / He stormed out of the room because he was furious.)

Afraid, the girl can hardly sleep. (When she feels afraid, the girl can hardly sleep / The girl can hardly sleep because of her fear.)

I neglected to reply to this post of yours, Gustavo. Yes, I must agree with you that the "causative element" is a possible meaning with this construction.

I had resisted the possibility of that meaning in my analysis above, wanting to reserve it for the "being" and "having been" variants.

However, having come upon the below example in the wild, I have to acknowledge that the causative/reason meaning is possible without -ing:

Below is an excerpt from the Heritage Press book insert for its 1955 reprint of Oliver Wendell Holmes's The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1857):

Quote:
"His [Holmes's] lectures were not only accurate and descriptive, but wonderfully amusing. That may have been the reason why James Russel Lowell, who had just become editor of the new magazine that Dr. Holmes had christened The Atlantic Monthly, begged him to write some pieces for it. About this request, Holmes wrote that 'Lowell woke me from a kind of literary lethargy in which I was half-slumbering, to call me to active service.'

"The result of this call to active service was a series of twelve conversational essays which appeared in the first twelve numbers of The Atlantic. And in the commercial panic of 1857 the fledgling magazine would have foundered had it not been for these fascinating essays. Extremely successful, they were gathered into a book that was brought out the following year as The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table."

I think it's useful to look at this construction in context; that is why I have quoted the whole passage at the end of which this live example appeared.

From the context, it is clear that the meaning is not that they were gathered into a book when they were successful, but because they were successful.

Although I'd have used "Being extremely successful" or "On account of their extreme success" instead, I must admit I find this excerpt very well written.

It's worth noting that the construction doesn't come out of nowhere, as do the decontextualized examples in an opening grammar post.