Realizing that

Question

Realizing that there was no hope to save his business, he gave up.

https://www.csun.edu/~bashforth/305_PDF/305_PDF_Grammar/ParticiplePhrasesAsReducedARelatives.pdf
Why do we call "realizing that... business" a participle phrase and not a clause?
What is the grammatical form and function of "that there...business" and what does "that" refer to?

BillJ · Accepted Answer

[Realizing that there was no hope ~~to save~~ of saving his business], he gave up.

The link you provide is wrong about this, I'm afraid. And in the example it cites, the noun phrase as complement of "was" should be "no hope of saving his business", not "no hope to save his business".

We don't call it a phrase. It's a non-finite gerund-participial clause functioning as a supplementary adjunct.

Like most non-finite clauses, it has no overt subject but it is syntactically linked to the main clause in that the missing subject is controlled by the subject of the main clause: it was he who realised there was no hope of saving his business. We thus understand the subject to be "he" (or "him").

"That" is a subordinator functioning as 'marker'. It introduces the underlined declarative content clause that functions as complement of "realising".

Realizing that

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