To better appreciate the value of free modifiers, particularly of the kind that works in the same league as resumptive modifiers and summative modifiers, we must first survey the entire universe of modifiers in the English language. We will recall, to begin with, that there are two basic types of modifiers: the bound modifier and the free modifier. Bound modifiers are those that are essential to the meaning of a clause or sentence, as the relative clause “those that are essential to the meaning of the sentence” in this particular sentence is essential to its main clause. Without that relative clause, the main clause and the sentence itself cannot exist; all we will have is the meaningless fragment “bound modifiers are.”

On the other hand, in that same sentence, the long phrase that begins with “…as the relative clause” and ends with “…essential to its main clause” is a free modifier. We can knock it off and it will not even be missed in the sentence that will be left: “Bound modifiers are those that are essential to the meaning of a clause or sentence.” The sentence has shed off a substantial chunk of itself, of course, as a lizard might lose its tail and yet grow it again someday, but otherwise nothing serious or untoward has happened to its semantic health.

One distinctive feature of bound modifiers is that they are not set off from the rest of the sentence; they normally form an unbroken chain of words that ends with a period, or pauses with a comma or some other punctuation mark. Free modifiers, on the other hand, are set off by commas most of the time, as the comparative clause “a lizard might lose its tail and yet grow it again someday” finds itself hemmed in by two commas in the sentence we examined earlier. Not to have those two commas, or not to have at least one of them in what we will call their frontline acts, would make free modifiers such a disruptive nuisance or outright killers of sense and meaning.

Now that we are about to examine their semantic structures in detail, we might as well make a quick review of the eight forms free modifiers usually take to do their job. Those forms have familiar and largely self-explanatory names: subordinate clauses, infinitive phrases, verb clusters, noun clusters, adjective clusters, appositives, absolutes, and free relative clauses. For a better understanding of them, let’s now look at sentences that use the various forms of free modifiers (shown in italics):

Subordinate clause: “You may leave now even if you haven’t finished your work yet.”

Infinitive phrase: “To win this bout, you must knock him out in this round.”

Verb cluster, a crossover pattern that puts the “-ing” form of verbs into modifying-clause mode: “Taking the cue, the buffoon withdrew his candidacy.”

Noun cluster, a crossover pattern that puts the second noun from a main clause into modifying-clause mode: “A veteran of many campaign seasons, the aging politician knows the turf that well.” (Its basic, rather convoluted form: “The aging politician is a veteran of many campaign seasons who knows the turf that well.”)

Adjective cluster, a crossover pattern that puts an adjective or a verb’s past-participle form into modifying-clause mode: “Desperate over the taunts about her academic deficiencies, the woman withdrew her job application.”

Appositive, the nifty description that we insert between nouns and their verbs: “The widow, a pale ghost of her old self, wailed at her husband’s funeral.”

Absolute nominative, which puts the passive-voice verb into the “-ing” or past-participle form and knocks off the helping verb: “All hope gone, the soldier beat a hasty retreat.”

Free relative clauses. I have deferred discussion of free relative clauses for last because we’ll be giving them much fuller treatment than the rest. There is a special reason for giving them a much closer look. Free relative clauses, along with resumptive modifiers and summative modifiers, are actually among the most powerful tools available to us for achieving clarity and coherence as well as elegance in our prose.

We will first focus on the power of free relative clauses to expand ideas in a sentence way beyond the limits of the usual subject-verb-predicate format. As we already know, a bound modifier is limited to identifying the noun form that precedes or follows it in a clause, as in this example: “The Makati City executive with whom I had a heated traffic altercation last month is now my friend.”

The long italicized clause in the sentence above is actually a bound modifier that closes the sentence in an airtight loop. Every word in that clause is essential to its own meaning and that of the whole sentence. We can liken a bound modifier to an animal species that has already perfected itself genetically, thus arriving at its evolutionary dead-end. Free relative clauses, in contrast, form part of the wide gene pool of language that makes infinite permutations of thought possible.

We will explore that idea in greater detail in the next Forum update.
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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 25, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved. This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 63 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

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Using relative clauses is a very convenient way to load sentences with more information. They do their job quite well when only one or two of them are involved, as in this sentence: “The car that figured in the smashup ran through the red light, first hitting the sedan, which rolled over on impact.” The first relative clause in the sentence is, of course, “that figured in the smashup,” modifying “car”; the second is “which rolled over on impact,” modifying “sedan.”

When we attach more and more relative clauses to the sentence, however, ambiguity and monotony start getting into the picture. The sentence becomes progressively confusing until it breaks into an incomprehensible sprawl. See, for instance, what the addition of three more relative clauses does to the sentence given as example above: “The car that figured in the smashup ran through the red light, first hitting the incoming sedan, which rolled over on impact, hitting in turn a van that was parked on the side of the road, which then hurtled toward eight joggers having breakfast at the sidewalk café.” This time, we have produced a mishmash of vague antecedents and linkages—a clear sign of a serious relative-clause overload.

We have already seen how a good resumptive modifier straightens out this messy and confusing state of affairs. By using, say, “smashup” as a resumptive modifier, we can construct this compelling, admirably coherent rendition of the same sentence:

A car that ran through the red light figured in a terrible smashup, a smashup that made an incoming sedan roll over on impact, a smashup so strong the sedan hit a parked van and sent it hurtling toward eight joggers having breakfast at a sidewalk café.

Not even the most well-organized string of relative clauses in the world can match the drama of this resumptive-modifier-using sentence.

As good as the resumptive modifier is in doing its job, it finds worthy competition in another semantic device for that same assignment. That device is the summative modifier. Instead of repeating a key phrase used in a preceding clause of the sentence, a summative modifier introduces an altogether new word or phrase that sums up a core idea of the preceding clause, then makes that word or phrase the thematic subject of succeeding relative clauses.

The phrase “tragic accident,” for example, works as a summative modifier in this alternative rendition of our previous example:

A car that ran through the red light figured in a terrible smashup, a tragic accident in which the wayward vehicle first hit an incoming sedan, creating a domino effect that made the sedan roll over and slam on a parked van, which in turn hurtled toward eight joggers having breakfast at a sidewalk café.

This sentence packs an even more powerful wallop than the resumptive-modifier version, principally because its summative modifier offers even more graphic and more compelling imagery than the resumptive modifier used in the other sentence.

Let’s take a closer look at the mechanism of the summative modifier. We can see that this device positions itself right after a pause created by a comma at the end of a sentence segment. It comes in the form of a noun or noun phrase that concisely—and very quickly—recapitulates a major idea presented earlier in the sentence, and a relative clause in turn elaborates on it with new information. There isn’t much room in a sentence for long, extended summative modifiers; the best ones are single summary words or very short noun phrases of perhaps two to three words. To make summary modifiers longer than this only serves to arrest the momentum of the exposition, defeating the very reason for using them in the first place.

Look what happens when a summative modifier gets too long for comfort:

A car that ran through the red light yesterday figured in a terrible smashup, a tragic accident of such horrendous proportions and repercussions in which the wayward vehicle first hit an incoming sedan, creating an unparalleled, bizarre, and gory domino effect that made it roll over and slam on a parked van, which in turn hurtled toward eight joggers having breakfast at a sidewalk café.

The extended noun phrases “a tragic accident of such horrendous proportions and repercussions” and “an unparalleled, bizarre, and gory domino effect” invalidate themselves as summative modifiers because of their excessive length and ponderousness.

The summative modifier is meant to help us avoid ambiguity and monotony in our prose, not to create confusion and introduce tedium to it. It’s an excellent sentence extender but it doesn’t tolerate delay or hesitance in execution. So long as we keep this in mind, the summative modifier—like the resumptive modifier—can make our writing much better organized and more expressive than it can ever be with only plain relative clauses at our command.
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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, February 25, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila Times. All rights reserved.This essay subsequently appeared as Chapter 62 of the author’s book Give Your English the Winning Edge © 2009 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved.

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