A question about the topicalization of participle phrases from Student S.

“I have recently revised your course materials, but I am still confused about this:

With the topicalisation of participial phrases, how can we determine whether the topicalized phrase is an independent adverb in the clause or an adjective modifying the subject?

e.g. Skipping happily, the little girl went to school

e.g. Sitting there, the woman is happy.

Could you give me more example so that I can be clearer about this concept?”

Hi S.,

Thanks for your question. 

The point is actually that, when a modifier phrase is in this position at the front of the clause, we cannot tell whether it’s modifying the whole sentence or just modifying the subject from the word order alone. This word order allows for both analyses, so we would need to determine which one the speaker/writer intended mainly from context. 

For example, for a sentence like “In the morning, my friend went running”, it is obvious that “in the morning” is modifying the whole sentence; and in “Full from breakfast, she returned to her work,” “full from breakfast” is modifying the subject. 

But you are very right to observe that, when it comes to modifying phrases that involve actions (from non-finite verbs like participles), the difference between “modifying the whole sentence” and “modifying just the subject” is often blurred -- and actually, the difference is often not that important, because either way, the action needs an implicit “doer” anyway, and that doer would naturally be the subject if there is no other possible “doer” in the sentence.

What I mean is, if we look at “Skipping happily, the little girl went to school,” “skipping happily” expresses the same meaning whether you analyze it as “modifying the whole sentence” or “just modifying the subject ‘the woman’”, because the action of “skipping happily” needs a “doer” anyway, and the implied doer would be the subject.

So, whether you interpret it as “modifying the whole sentence” or “just the subject”, the resulting meaning is still “the little girl, in the state/doing the action of skipping happily, is happy.” Whether we see it as “the girl, with the description of being in the state of skipping happily, went to school,” or “the girl, while she is doing the action of skipping happily, went to school” -- the meaning of the sentence is basically the same. 

No other noun can be the doer of the topicalized action as long as that action is in that topicalized position -- for example:

The girl shouted at the boy skipping happily.   

The “skipping happily” here, because of its position, can be interpreted as an adjective for “the boy” (that is, “the boy” is the doer) or it can be interpreted as “modifying the whole sentence” (that is, “the girl” is the doer). 

Skipping happily, the girl shouted at the boy. 

However, if we topicalize “skipping happily,” then only “the girl” can be the doer, and so it doesn’t matter whether you interpret it as “modifying just the subject” or “the whole sentence.” The resulting meaning is pretty much the same -- it is that, “the girl”, doing the action of “skipping happily,” shouted at the boy. 

The point to remember is that, because of this, we can use topicalization to make our meaning clearer when there can be confusion.

For example, in the example above, if we want to say that “the girl” is the doer of “skipping happily,” we should not put the phrase at the end of the sentence. We should topicalize it to make it clearer.

The girl shouted at the boy, skipping happily.

Or, if we keep it at the end, we can use punctuation to help make it clear (but this is only possible in writing obviously). We can put a comma before “skipping happily” to indicate that it is modifying the whole sentence (i.e. “the girl” is the “doer”) rather than modifying “the boy.” 

Even in the earlier example I gave, “Full from breakfast, she returned to her work,” it doesn’t really matter which way to interpret “full from breakfast” -- the resulting meaning is still, “she”, in the state of being “full from breakfast”, returned to her work.

The difference between “modifying the whole sentence” vs. “modifying just the subject” is like the difference between:

 “嗰個喺度做緊participle中嘅動作嘅subject，在做finite verb嘅動作" vs. 

“個subject，喺做participle中嘅動作呢個狀態下，在做finite verb嘅動作"

That is, there is no actual difference in the meanings expressed -- because the main thing is that the action of that participle phrase is “done” by the subject either way.

Ms. Charlotte