In this video I'd like to explain what
an absolute phrase is.
This is a very rare kind of
phrase, and if you don't remember what it
is that's quite alright. I think most
of us seldom use this kind of phrase,
but it is sort of an interesting phrase
nevertheless. The key to this phrase is
that it's really not properly attached
to the rest of the syntax of the
sentence. In other words it seems to kind
of be by itself. Now it's not a dangling
modifier, so it's not inappropriate in
the way it is incorporated in the
sentence, but it does seem to be
by itself a little bit, and usually
it's attached by a comma or a dash. It
often comes at the beginning of a
sentence, but it can come later as well,
and we have included one example here
where the absolute phrase comes at the
end. But the real core of an absolute
phrase is a noun or a pronoun along with
some modifiers.
These modifiers are
usually a participle of some kind, or an
adjective, and you can have multiple of
these in an absolute phrase. Alright, so
the modifiers are usually a participle
or an adjective. Let's see how this
actually works. In our first example we
read, "The morning dew evaporating, all the
soccer fields were drying out." Now, you
can hear that's a bit of an awkward
construction, but it does sort of work,
and this first bit is the absolute
phrase. We have our noun here ("dew") and then
we have some modifiers so we're going to
call it "the morning dew." And we've added a
participle ("evaporating") which is a
present participle. Present participles
always end in -ing you might remember. So
in this case we have the morning dew
evaporating, and then we start our
regular sentence. You can see now that we
have all the prerequisites
for an absolute phrase. And you can also
tell that it's not really being attached
to the sentence with let's say a
preposition. It's not included neatly in
the sentence itself. It's just sort of by
itself. And yet it kind of works at
the same time. If you look at the next
one, we start again with an absolute
phrase, and this time we've used a noun
again but now we have a past
participle. So "organized, organized, and
then the past participle is again
organized" -- those are the three parts of
the verb: present, past, and past participle.
So we have all the same prerequisites
and then we have a comma and we have our
regular clause. The next one is a little
bit different. Here we have an adjective
instead. So we have our noun ("iPad") and
then we have an adjective that describes
the iPad. One thing you may notice is
that often in an absolute phrase you can
include this little present participle
"being," so "the party being organized" or
his "iPad being dead," and if that's the
case then often that's a clue that
you're dealing with an absolute phrase,
although the truth is that usually you don't
actually need to include the word "being."
It can easily be left out. The last one
also here uses adjectives -- so this one
goes "her clothes all muddy and tattered,"
but, in this case, the second one here --
this one is a
past participle. So I guess to be honest
this one is really a mix of the two!
"Muddy" is an adjective and "tattered" is a
past participle. If we wanted them to be
parallel I guess we could say "muddied
and tattered," but you know not a huge deal.
So that's the absolute phrase. Just
to recap very quickly, it's a phrase that
sort of sticks by itself a little bit,
doesn't seem to be attached all that
well, it has a noun or pronoun at
the core, and then it has some modifiers,
and those modifiers are usually a
participle (either present or past)
and an adjective. That's the absolute
phrase!