Is this a dangling participle?
Is this a dangling participle?
”The summit of the mountain towering above him, he cried with joy.”
To me, I have a hard time telling if “towering” modifies mountain or summit. I can see that the intended meaning is probably summit. But what do you think?
Top answer
The summit of the mountain towering above him , he cried with joy. No: it's not a dangling participle, since the clause is entirely self contained with its own subject and predicate It's actually a kind of supplement called an 'absolute' construction. Here the subject is the summit of the mountain , and the predicate is the verb phrase towering above him.
- The summit of the mountain towering above him , he cried with joy.
- No: it's not a dangling participle, since the clause is entirely self contained with its own subject and predicate It's actually a kind of supplement called an 'absolute' construction.
- Here the subject is the summit of the mountain , and the predicate is the verb phrase towering above him.
- It's called an absolute because the clause has its own subject, is subordinate in form, and has no syntactic link to the main clause ( he cried with joy ).
- Cf.
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The summit of the mountain towering above him, he cried with joy.
No: it's not a dangling participle, since the clause is entirely self contained with its own subject and predicate
It's actually a kind of supplement called an 'absolute' construction. Here the subject is the summit of the mountain, and the predicate is the verb phrase towering above him.
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