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 free modifier is the long phrase that begins with
“…as the relative clause” and ends with
“…essential to its main clause.” 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 at least not to have 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 now of
the eight forms that 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. To get a better perspective 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 clause. We are deferring discussion of free relative clauses for last because we’ll be giving them much fuller treatment than the rest. There’s a special reason for giving them this 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 next week’s column.
This essay, which first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times
, subsequently became Chapter 63 of my book Giving Your English the Winning Edge
, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times
:Crafting more elegant prose with free modifiersNext week:
Making good use of free relative clauses (December 19, 2024)
Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and X (Twitter) and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
