he was abandoned by his mother, forcing him to take care of himself

Hi all,

Is this sentence correct ?

'' He was abandoned by his mother, forcing him to take care of himself ''


Can I reduced the non defining relative pronoun of object ....who forced him to take care of himself ?

Thanks

duiter said:

Hi all,

Is this sentence correct ?

'' He was abandoned by his mother, forcing him to take care of himself ''


Can I reduced the non defining relative pronoun of object ....who forced him to take care of himself ?

Thanks

Click to expand...

Your original sentence makes perfect sense. If I understand your second question correctly, you are asking if you can change it to "He was abandoned by his mother, who forced him to take care of himself". If that is the case, I would say no unless you want to change the meaning. It wasn't his mother who forced him to take care of himself, it was the situation that resulted from her abandoning him which forced him to do so.

Thanks emsr2d2,

Is 'forcing him to take care of himself ' a participle clause ?

Thanks a lot

duiter said:

Hi all,

Is this sentence correct ?

'' He was abandoned by his mother, forcing him to take care of himself ''


Can I reduced the non defining relative pronoun of object ....who forced him to take care of himself ?

Thanks

Click to expand...

NOT A TEACHER

(1) One famous grammarian gives these examples:

He mistook me for a friend, so that he caused me some embarrassment.

This clause can be simplified as:

He mistook me for a friend, causing me some embarrassment.

or

He mistook me for a friend, thus causing me some embarrassment.

This famous grammarian (Dr. George O. Curme) says that the participial

clause does not modify anything. (As you can see in the so that

sentence, the participial clause is really an independent sentence.)

(2) Nevertheless, I think that some books say that it would be

OK to just say that "forcing himself to take care of himself"

modifies the whole sentence.