Dangling
modifier
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A typical example of a dangling
modifier is illustrated in Turning the corner, a handsome school building
appeared.[2]
The modifying clause Turning the corner is clearly supposed to describe
the behaviour of the narrator (or other observer), but grammatically it appears
to apply to nothing in particular, or to the school building. Similarly, in At
the age of eight, my family finally bought a dog,[3]
the modifier At the age of eight "dangles," not attaching to
the subject of the main clause (and conceivably implying that the family
was eight years old when it bought the dog, rather than the intended meaning of
giving the narrator's age at the time).
Dangling
participial clauses
As an adjunct, a participial clause
is normally at the beginning or the end of a sentence, and usually attached to
the subject of the main clause, as in "Walking down the street (clause),
the man (subject) saw the beautiful trees (object)." However, when the
subject is missing or the clause attaches itself to another object in a
sentence, the clause is seemingly "hanging" on nothing or on an
entirely inappropriate noun. It thus "dangles", as in these
sentences:
Walking down Main Street, the trees
were beautiful.
Reaching the station, the sun came
out.
In the first sentence, the adjunct
clause may at first appear to modify "the trees," the subject of the
sentence. However, it actually modifies the speaker of the sentence, who is not
explicitly mentioned.
In the second sentence, the adjunct
may at first appear to modify "the sun," the subject of the sentence.
Presumably, there is another, human subject that did reach the station and
observed the sun coming out, but since this subject is not mentioned in the
text, the intended meaning is obscured, and therefore this kind of sentence is
considered[according to whom?] incorrect in standard English.
Strunk and White's The
Elements of Style provides another kind of example, a
misplaced modifier (another participle):
I saw the trailer peeking through
the window.
Presumably, this means the speaker
was peeking through the window, but the placement of the clause "peeking
through the window" makes it sound as though the trailer were doing so.
The sentence can be recast as, "Peeking through the window, I saw the
trailer."
Similarly, in "She left the
room fuming", it is conceivably the room, rather than "she",
that was fuming. It may be preferable to write "Fuming, she left the
room", to avoid any ambiguity.
Strunk and White describe as
"ludicrous" another of their examples: "Being in a dilapidated
condition, I was able to buy the house very cheap." The author obviously
meant the house was dilapidated. But (in the opinion of Strunk and White) what
he wrote was that he (the speaker or writer, identified as
"I") was.
Bernstein offers another ludicrous
example: "Roaring down the track at seventy miles an hour, the stalled car
was smashed by the train." [4]
The adjunct is meant to modify
"train": it is the train that is roaring down the track. But the
subject of the main clause is "the stalled car". The writer is
suggesting that the stalled car, which really isn't moving at all, is roaring
down the track. The sentence could be rewritten more felicitously:
"Roaring down the track at seventy miles an hour, the train smashed the
stalled car." Or: "The stalled car was smashed by the train, roaring
down the track at seventy miles an hour."
But who leaped? Presumably the
horseman – certainly not the horse, which was wearing the saddle. In this
example, the noun or pronoun intended to be modified isn't even in the
sentence. Unproblematic: "Leaping to the saddle, he made his horse bolt
forward", or "As he leaped into the saddle, his horse bolted."
(In the latter, the non-finite adjunct clause is replaced by a finite
subordinate clause.)
These examples illustrate a writing
principle that dangling participles violate. Follett states the principle:
"A participle at the head of a sentence automatically affixes itself to
the subject of the following verb – in effect a requirement that the writer
either make his [grammatical] subject consistent with the participle or discard
the participle for some other construction." [5]
Strunk and White put it this way: "A participial phrase at the beginning
of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject." [6]
Dangling participles should not be
confused with clauses in absolute constructions, which are considered grammatical. Because the participial
phrase in an absolute construction is not semantically attached to any single element
in the sentence, it is easily confused with a dangling participle.[7]
The difference is that a participial phrase is intended to modify a particular
noun or pronoun, but is instead erroneously attached to a different noun,
whereas as an absolute clause is not intended to modify any noun at all. An
example of an absolute construction is:
The weather being beautiful, we plan
to go to the beach today.
Non-participial
modifiers
Non-participial modifiers that
dangle can also be troublesome:
After years of being lost under a
pile of dust, Walter P. Stanley, III, left, found all the old records of the
Bangor Lions Club.[8]
The above sentence, from a newspaper
article, suggests that it is the subject of the sentence, Walter Stanley, who
was buried under a pile of dust, and not the records. It is the prepositional
phrase "after years of being lost under a pile of dust" which
dangles. This example has been cited in at least one usage manual[vague] as an
example of the kind of ambiguity that can result from a dangling modifier.
Another famous example of this
humorous effect is by Groucho Marx as Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding in the 1930 film, Animal
Crackers:
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got
into my pajamas I'll never know. – Groucho
Marx[9]
Though under the most plausible
interpretation of the first sentence, Captain Spaulding would have been wearing
the pajamas, the line plays on the grammatical possibility that the elephant
was instead.
Strunk and White offer this example:
"As a mother of five, and with another on the way, my ironing board is
always up." [10]
Is the ironing board (grammatical subject) really the mother of five? Less
ambiguous: "As the mother of five, and with another on the way, I always
keep my ironing board up."[dubious
– discuss] Or: "My ironing board is always up, because I am the
mother of five, with another on the way."
Modifiers
reflecting the mood or attitude of the speaker
Participial modifiers sometimes can
be intended to describe the attitude or mood of the speaker, even when the
speaker is not part of the sentence. Some such modifiers are standard and are
not considered dangling modifiers: "Speaking of [topic]," and
"Trusting that this will put things into perspective," for example,
are commonly used to transition from one topic to a related one or for adding a
conclusion to a speech.
Usage
of "hopefully"
Since about the 1960s, controversy
has arisen over the proper usage of the adverb hopefully.[11]
Some grammarians[who?] object to constructions such as "Hopefully, the sun
will be shining tomorrow."[12]
Their complaint is that the term "hopefully" dangles, and can be
understood to describe either the speaker's state of mind or the manner in
which the sun will shine. It no longer modifies just a verb, an adjective or
another adverb, but instead modifies the whole sentence to convey the attitude
of the speaker.
"Hopefully" used in this
way is a disjunct (cf. "admittedly," "mercifully,"
"oddly"), and is reminiscent of the German "hoffentlich,"
which similarly means "it is to be hoped that . . . ." Disjuncts
(also called sentence adverbs) are useful in colloquial
speech[dubious
– discuss] for the concision they permit.
No other word in English expresses
that thought. In a single word we can say it is regrettable that (regrettably)
or it is fortunate that (fortunately) or it is lucky that (luckily),
and it would be comforting if there were such a word as hopably or, as
suggested by Follett, hopingly, but there isn't. [...] In this instance
nothing is to be lost – the word would not be destroyed in its primary meaning
– and a useful, nay necessary term is to be gained.[13]
What had been expressed in lengthy
adverbial constructions, such as "it is regrettable that …" or
"it is fortunate that . .…. ," had of course always been shortened to
the adverbs "regrettably" or "fortunately." Bill Bryson
says, "those writers who scrupulously avoid 'hopefully' in such
constructions do not hesitate to use at least a dozen other words –
'apparently,' 'presumably,' 'happily,' 'sadly,' 'mercifully,' 'thankfully,' and
so on – in precisely the same way."[14]
What has changed, however, in the controversy[dubious
– discuss] over "hopefully" being used for "he was
hoping that . . .," or "she was full of hope that . . .," is
that the original clause was transferred from the speaker, as a kind of
shorthand to the subject itself, as though "it" had expressed the
hope. ("Hopefully, the sun will be shining.") Although this still
expressed the speaker's hope "that the sun will be shining," it may
have caused a certain disorientation as to who was expressing what when it
first appeared. As time passes, this controversy[dubious
– discuss] may fade as the usage becomes increasingly accepted,
especially since adverbs such as "mercifully,"
"gratefully," and "thankfully" are similarly used.
Merriam-Webster gives a usage note on its entry for "hopefully";
the editors point out that the disjunct sense of the word dates to the early
18th century and has been in widespread use since at least the 1930s. Objection
to this sense of the word, they state, only became widespread in the 1960s. The
editors maintain that this usage is "entirely standard."[15]
Yet the choice of
"regrettably" above as a counterexample points out an additional
problem. At the time that objection to "hopefully" became publicized,
grammar books[vague]
relentlessly pointed out the distinction between "regrettably" and
"regretfully." The latter is not to be used as a sentence adverb,
they state; it must refer to the subject of the sentence.[16]
The misuse of "regretfully" produces worse undesired results than
"hopefully," possibly contributing to disdain for the latter. The
counterpart hopably was never added to the language.
Examples
- On the face of it, he showed his mettle in the boxing
ring.
- Turning blue, the chicken was lodged in his mouth.
- Kathy went to the seminar with Jenny, but she was
talking to her friend who makes a lot of money on the phone.
- An example (since corrected) from a Wikipedia document
: adding text without clearly placing its source may lead to
allegations of original research, violations of the sourcing policy, and
even plagiarism. Does adding text this way lead to plagiarism,
violations of plagiarism, or allegations of plagiarism?
The entire wiki link on the subject can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier
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