Dangling participles

[Sped Tiger]

I have come up with an assumption: dangling participles are incorrect unless they are used with adverbs of place, modifying where something is located.
I'd like you to prove or to refute my assumption.
According to it, these dangling-participle clauses are wrong:
a. Being very old, I decided to throw the hat away;
b. Finally found after a long time of being lost, they finders brought the kitten to its house.
But these are correct:
a. Buried here, you'll find eternal happiness;
b. Hidden in the ground very deep, I wasn't able to find the pirates' chest.

 

[emsr2d2]

I have come up with an assumption a theory: dangling participles are incorrect unless they are used with adverbs of place, modifying where something is located.
I'd like you to prove or to refute my assumption theory.

According to it me, these dangling-participle clauses are wrong:

a. Being very old, I decided to throw the hat away.
b. Finally found after a long time of being lost, they the finders brought the kitten to its house.

But these are correct:
c. Buried here, you'll find eternal happiness.
d. Hidden very deep in the ground, very deep, I wasn't able to find the pirates' chest.

You're right about the first two. In a), it's not clear whether you or the hat is very old. In b), it appears that "the finders" are the ones who had been lost for a long time. Also, I'm not sure that "its house" is what you meant. If they knew who the lost kitten belonged to and took it to that house, use "took it back to the owners". If they took it to their own home, use "their house" (the house belonging to the finders).
You're also right about c.
However, d) doesn't work. It suggests that the speaker "I" was hidden very deep in the ground.

Note that we don't "come up with an assumption". What you've come up with is a theory.

 

[jutfrank]

What you're calling 'dangling' participles are only incorrect when they fail to convey the meaning that the speaker intended. As long as the reference is clear to the listener, there's no problem.

It is normally understood that if a participle is 'dangling', either it has no apparent referent, or the referent is misunderstood. This means that by definition all dangling participles are incorrect. Read the following page for plenty of good examples:

Dangling Participle: Explanation and Examples

Dangling participles have a funny-sounding name, but many do not really understand why it is a grammatical faux pas.

www.thoughtco.com

 

[jutfrank]

a. Buried here, you'll find eternal happiness;

This is okay, largely I think because it forms a particularly strong grammatical pattern: find something somewhere. You could of course say with the same meaning You'll find eternal happiness buried here.

You've noticed that this pattern can be rearranged, placing the location phrase at the beginning of the sentence. Since this rearrangement does not interfere with the grammatical pattern (the relations between each element), the meaning too remains clear: it is happiness, not I, that is buried.

b. Hidden in the ground very deep, I wasn't able to find the pirates' chest.

This is an odd example because it seems contradictory. If you weren't able to find it, how do you know it was hidden in the ground very deep? It's not as usual to say that we don't find something somewhere. If you were to change wasn't to was, the meaning would be clear enough, in my judgement.