Participles as modifiers

[mamaheol]

Good evening

I am working on an extract from the novel Small Island by Andrea Levy (a highly recommendable book, by the way), looking particularly at adjectival modifiers. I have identified the participles "avoiding", "pulling" and "closed" in the following extract as adjectives (adjectival modifiers). I would be grateful if somebody would confirm this, or, if I am wrong, tell me how to analyse these sentences.

I stepped back down two stepsavoiding a small lump of dog's-business that rested in some litter and leaves. I straightened my coat, pulling it closed where I had unfortunately lost a button.

Thanks.

[philo2009]

Originally Posted by mamaheol

Good evening

I am working on an extract from the novel Small Island by Andrea Levy (a highly recommendable book, by the way), looking particularly at adjectival modifiers. I have identified the participles "avoiding", "pulling" and "closed" in the following extract as adjectives (adjectival modifiers). I would be grateful if somebody would confirm this, or, if I am wrong, tell me how to analyse these sentences.

I stepped back down two steps, avoiding a small lump of dog's-business that rested in some litter and leaves. I straightened my coat, pulling it closed where I had unfortunately lost a button.

Thanks.

Participles (and -ing forms in general) are by their very nature a kind of syntactic hybrid, serving different grammatical functions: those that you cite here introduce phrases that are essentially adverbial in function, supplying information about events occurring while others occur.

A truly adjectival (or 'adjunctive') participle phrase is quite distinctive in that it serves to identify a noun referent in the manner of a restrictive relative clause, as 'playing tennis' in

The boy playing tennis is Peter.

(= The boy who is playing tennis...)

N.B. Adverbial (sometimes termed 'disjunctive') participle phrases are obligatorily set off by commas. I have inserted the missing comma before 'avoiding' in your text.

[mamaheol]

Thank you for your quick and clarifying reply. I am also trying to understand the following sentence:

It was true that some were missing, replaced by cardboard and strips of white tape.

("Some" referring to ornate pillars at the doorway of a house).

As far as I can tell, "missing" has an adjectival function, following the linking verb "to be", but what is the function of the phrase "replaced by cardboard and strips of white tape"?

Thanks.

[philo2009]

It is simply elliptical for 'and they had been replaced...'