parallel structure?

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1. It had started snowing, the new flakes falling gently down on the older, hardened snow.

Q) After reading #1, I didn't get the structure of the sentence(or the meaning) immediately.

Is the structure like this? (It had started snowing and the new flakes had started falling gently down on the older, hardened snow?) Can this kind of omission occur?

Enoon · Accepted Answer

moon72961. It had started snowing, the new flakes falling gently down on the older, hardened snow. Q) After reading #1, I didn't get the structure of the sentence(or the meaning) immediately. Is the structure like this? (It had started snowing and the new flakes had started falling gently down on the older, hardened snow?) Can this kind of omission occur?

It's like "He climbed the ladder, (he) placing each foot carefully on each rung." Nothing is omitted. On the contrary, in your sentence, instead of the subject of the participle being omitted, as is usual when it is the same as the subject of the main clause, it is there (the new flakes). It is hard to recognize the structure because of the dummy "it" as the subject in the first clause (it started snowing).

CalifJim · Answer

moon7296Q) After reading #1, I didn't get the structure of the sentence(or the meaning) immediately.

You can paraphrase it like this.

It had started snowing [ in such a way that / with the result that ] the new flakes [fell / were falling] down on the older, hardened snow.
____________

Yes, this kind of pattern occurs often. The second part has an -ing word instead of a full finite verb tense. The second part is loosely associated with the first part, and "in such a way that" or "with the result that" is not always the best paraphrase.

CJ

parallel structure?

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