Impersonal absolute participles

Question

Hi guys

please help me out with Impersonal absolute participles wherein the participle is left without a proper 'subject of reference' like in

1. Considering his abilities , he should have done better.
2.Roughly speaking , the distance for here to the nearest taxi stand is two miles.

but here i suppose participle is qualifying a pronoun 'HE'

please elaborate your answer

Thanks

Cheers

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

These are classic examples of the "dangling participial phrase". The participle must modify the subject of the sentence.
In sentence #1, who is "considering his abilities"? Is he considering his own abilities? I don't think that was the writer's intention. Someone else was doing the considering, and commenting on what he actually did.
The sentence should be re-written: If we take his abilities into consideration. he should have done better.
Sentence #2 is a bit more tricky. But the distance itself cannot speak! The person giving the directions is the one "speaking roughly". Possible revision:
The distance from here to the nearest taxi stand is, I would say, roughly two miles.

OWL Purdue has a nice explanation of dangling modifiers at this link.

Rahul2689 · Answer

thank you

Anonymous · Answer

what is the difference between 'impersonal absolute' and 'participle prepositions'. Both look the same.

Anonymous · Answer

In the first sentence 'Considering his abilities', there is no subject of reference. Here the action 'Considering' has is left without a doer. We do not know who is 'Considering his abilities'. Hence,it is called impersonal absolute.

CalifJim · Answer

Rahul2689Please help me out with impersonal absolute participles wherein the participle is left without a proper 'subject of reference' ...

Impersonal absolute participle (clause) is a complicated name for a construction that appears to be a faulty participle clause (the so-called "dangling" modifier), but which is permitted because its subject is implicitly a pronoun like I, we, or you, and not the subject of the main clause which it precedes.

If you understand this, you understand that there are no impersonal absolute participle clauses which have a 'subject of reference'. It's part of the definition of this construction that it has no 'subject of reference'. This is just a confusing way of saying that the implicit subject of this construction (unstated I, we, or you) always differs from the explicit subject of the main clause.

Rahul2689 I suppose participle is qualifying a the pronoun 'he'.

No. He is not considering his own abilities. We are considering them, but we do not write We considering his abilities in such cases.

Considering his abilities, he should have done better.

The impersonal absolute participle clause always occurs at the beginning of a sentence. In this case we can paraphrase it as If we consider ..., If I consider ..., or If you consider ....

Impersonal absolute participles

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