Строй современного английского языка

The Absolute Construction 263
I n the following sentence both a parenthesis and an absolute construction come between the subject group and the predicate. The entire question of whom one loved, he continued, Emma looking up from her work for the first time as she listened, seemed to him of relative unimportance. (BUECHNER) It should also be noted that there is a subordinate clause (of) whom one loved belonging to the subject group, and another subordinate clause, as she listened, belonging to the absolute construction, so that the number of elements separating the predicate of the main clause (seemed to be. . .) from its subject (the . . . question) is quite considerable. However, no misunderstanding can arise here, though there are three finite verb forms (loved, continued, and listened) intervening between the subject question and its predicate seemed . . . This is due to the fact that each of these three finite verb forms is closely connected with Its own subject (in every case a pronoun immediately preceding it), namely, one loved, he continued, she listened. Besides, it should be noted that neither loved nor listened would have made any sense in connection with the subject question, and as to the verb continued, it might be connected with the subject question only if the verb were followed by an infinitive of appropriate meaning, e. g. the question continued to worry him. As it is, continued here means 'continued to speak', which can only be connected with a subject representing a human being.
One more remark about the absolute construction is necessary here. It concerns the semantic ties between the absolute construction and the rest of the sentence. For example, we can say that in the sentence She had hoped that the war being over, life would gradually resume its old face the relations between the construction and the rest of the sentence are causal: we can say that the absolute construction is here a loose adverbial modifier of cause. On the other hand, in the sentence Weather permitting, we shall start on an excursion the relations between the construction and the rest of the sentence are those of condition, and the absolute construction may be said to be a loose adverbial modifier of condition. But now the question is, how do we know that it is cause in one example, and condition in the other? This is not expressed by any grammatical means and it only follows from the lexical meanings of the words and the general meaning of the sentence. What is expressed by grammatical means is merely the subordinate position of the absolute construction. All the rest lies outside the sphere of grammar.
Such, then, are the syntactical phenomena which occupy a place somewhere between the simple and the composite sentence and which may therefore be considered as a kind of stepping stone from the one to the other.
Now we proceed to study the various kinds of composite sentences.