his hair a mess

[Maybo]

I don't understand the following sentence structure:

When she had met him as Aladdin, he had been covered in the dust of the streets, his hair a mess and his only accessory a worn brown bag. (Aladdin by Elizabeth Rudnick)

Is "which is" omitted in these phrases "his hair (which is) a mess", "his only accessory (which is) a worn brown bag?

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

No. It's unneeded and ungrammatical. The sentence makes more sense as written.

 

[GoesStation]

No, that sentence would be incorrect and incomprehensible to a native speaker. You could split the sentence into two: When she had met him as Aladdin, he had been covered in the dust of the streets. His hair was a mess and his only accessory was a worn brown bag.

 

[Maybo]

No, that sentence would be incorrect and incomprehensible to a native speaker. You could split the sentence into two: When she had met him as Aladdin, he had been covered in the dust of the streets. His hair was a mess and his only accessory was a worn brown bag.

Why "was" can be omitted in the original sentence?
And when do we use this kind of sentence structure?

 

[GoesStation]

Why "was" can be omitted in the original sentence?

Please frame this question correctly. I'll answer it when you've done so.

 

[Maybo]

Please frame this question correctly. I'll answer it when you've done so.

Why can "was" be omitted in the original sentence?

 

[Tarheel]

As a standalone sentence it would have to be "His hair was a mess." As it is it's in the nature of a list of things.

 

[Phaedrus]

I don't understand the following sentence structure:

When she had met him as Aladdin, he had been covered in the dust of the streets, his hair a mess and his only accessory a worn brown bag. (Aladdin by Elizabeth Rudnick)

Why can "was" be omitted in the original sentence?

The part of the sentence that follows the second comma ("his hair a mess and his only accessory a worn brown bag") is a conjunction of two verbless absolute constructions. If a form of the copula BE may be said to be understood in those clauses, it is "being," not "was." The sentence could be rewritten like this:

When she had met him as Aladdin, he had been covered in the dust of the streets, his hair being a mess and his only accessory being a worn brown bag.

Absolute constructions are nonfinite (tenseless) subordinate clauses, called "absolute" because they are not connected to the main clause by a subordinating conjunction. "Being" is often omitted from such constructions (e.g., instead of "That being said" or "That having been said," we often have "That said").

In your example, "his hair" is the subject of the first verbless absolute construction, and "his only accessory" is the subject of the second absolute construction. The predicate of each verbless absolute construction is a noun phrase: "a mess," "a worn brown bag." Here is a related example:

"He looked toward the Presidential Suite, his expression a mixture of anxiety and resentment."

- Kortmann, B. (1991). Free adjuncts and absolutes in English: Problems of control and interpretation. Routledge: London and New York.

 

[tedmc]

I think the auxillary verbs were omitted (taken as understood) in the third and fourth clauses after it is used in the second clause.

 

[Maybo]

The part of the sentence that follows the second comma ("his hair a mess and his only accessory a worn brown bag") is a conjunction of two verbless absolute constructions. If a form of the copula BE may be said to be understood in those clauses, it is "being," not "was." The sentence could be rewritten like this:

When she had met him as Aladdin, he had been covered in the dust of the streets, his hair being a mess and his only accessory being a worn brown bag.

Absolute constructions are nonfinite (tenseless) subordinate clauses, called "absolute" because they are not connected to the main clause by a subordinating conjunction. "Being" is often omitted from such constructions (e.g., instead of "That being said" or "That having been said," we often have "That said").

In your example, "his hair" is the subject of the first verbless absolute construction, and "his only accessory" is the subject of the second absolute construction. The predicate of each verbless absolute construction is a noun phrase: "a mess," "a worn brown bag." Here is a related example:

I am not quite familiar with the use of "being". Do I get them right in the following example?

If "That being said" = "That having been said", then is it "his hair being a mess"= "his hair have been a mess"?

 

[jutfrank]

No.

This sentence is part of a story set in the past, so the sentence describes what Aladdin looked like when Princess Jasmin (?) met him: his hair was a mess and his only accessory was a brown bag.

To confuse the matter, the writer has decided to frame the narrative with the past perfect instead of the past simple. The writer could have said that his hair had been a mess and his only accessory had been a brown bag.

The non-finite verb being is used for grammatical reasons.

 

[Phaedrus]

I am not quite familiar with the use of "being". Do I get them right in the following example?

If "That being said" = "That having been said", then is it "his hair being a mess"= "his hair have been a mess"?

Maybo, I think it's important for you to realize that the construction you have asked about in this thread (the construction found in "his hair a mess") is used only in literary English. There probably isn't a single ESL class the world over which covers the construction.

"That being said" works a bit differently, in that "said" is not a noun phrase but a verb phrase headed by a past participle (or an adjective, depending on whether one finds it equivalent to "That having been said"). I didn't mean to sidetrack the thread by bringing it up.

The relevance of that other construction is simply that, like the one you have asked about, it is an absolute construction, from which "being" can be omitted. Similarly, "Lunch being over, they went back to work" can be shortened to "Lunch over, they went back to work."

It has occurred to me that the construction found in "his hair a mess" admits another type of paraphrase: "with his hair as a mess." Notice that whether it is paraphrased that way or as "(with) his hair being a mess," there is a subject-predicate relationship between "his hair" and "a mess."

Incidentally, the "with . . . as . . ." paraphrase doesn't work so well on the second verbless absolute construction in your sentence. Instead of (?) "with his only accessory as a brown bag," it would be better to reverse the order: "with a brown bag as his only accessory."

Coincidentally, in researching the American poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) on Wikipedia this morning, I came upon the following excerpt from a hymn he wrote, in which the type of construction you have asked about is again used twice in a row, but without "and" coming in the middle:

"O Brother Man, fold to thy heart thy brother:
Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;
To worship rightly is to love each other,
Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer."

- John Greenleaf Whittier

I'd sooner use the "with . . . as . . ." paraphrase there ("with each smile as a hymn, and with each kindly deed as a prayer") than the ". . . being . . ." paraphrase ("each smile being a hymn, and each kindly deed being a prayer"), though both capture the meaning of the construction.

Sorry for the delay in my reply. I have enjoyed this opportunity to write about the construction, which is one of my favorites. In all my years on grammar forums, you are the first learner whom I have seen ask about it.