Adjective Clauses
I sometimes cannot figure out which noun adjective clauses modify. For instance, in the sentence below, does the adjective clause modify "Virgil" or "imagery linked to madness, fire, or disease"? How can I be sure of the modified noun within a long sentence?
"Virgil does not idealize love, rather, he associates it with imagery linked to madness, fire, or disease, presenting love as a force that acts on Dido with a violence that is made literal by the end of Book IV."
Top answer
parende in the sentence below, does the adjective clause modify "Virgil" or "imagery linked to madness, fire, or disease"? presenting love as ... is an adverbial participle clause, not a noun modifier, so not adjectival in nature.
- parende in the sentence below, does the adjective clause modify "Virgil" or "imagery linked to madness, fire, or disease"?
- presenting love as ...
- is an adverbial participle clause, not a noun modifier, so not adjectival in nature.
- Participle clauses create a secondary predicate for the subject of the main clause to which they are attached, so "he" ( = "Virgil") is the implied subject of that participle clause.
- Substituting an equivalent finite clause for the (non-finite) participle clause gives us the following: Virgil ...
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parendein the sentence below, does the adjective clause modify "Virgil" or "imagery linked to madness, fire, or disease"?
presenting love as ... is an adverbial participle clause, not a noun modifier, so not adjectival in nature.
Participle clauses create a secondary predicate for the subject of the main clause to which they are attached, so "h
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