Absolute construction

In linguistics, an absolute construction is a grammatical construction standing apart from a normal or usual syntactical relation with other words or sentence elements. It can be a non-finite clause that is subordinate in form and modifies an entire sentence, an adjective or possessive pronoun standing alone without a modified substantive, or a transitive verb when its object is implied but not stated.[1][2][3][4] The term absolute derives from Latin absolūtum, meaning "loosened from" or "separated".[5]

Because the non-finite clause, called the absolute clause (or simply the absolute), is not semantically attached to any single element in the sentence, it is easily confused with a dangling participle.[4] The difference is that the participial phrase of a dangling participle is intended to modify a particular noun, but is instead erroneously attached to a different noun, whereas a participial phrase serving as an absolute clause is not intended to modify any noun at all.

  1. ^ "Definition of ABSOLUTE".
  2. ^ American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
  3. ^ Huddleston, Rodney; Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1265–6. ISBN 0-521-43146-8.
  4. ^ a b The American Heritage Book of English Usage: A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 1996. p. 1. ISBN 0-395-76785-7.
  5. ^ Wheelock, Frederic; LaFleur, Richard (2005). Wheelock's Latin (6th ed.). New York, NY: HarperCollins. pp. 155–7. ISBN 0-06-078371-0.