Syntactic orphans and adoptees: unattached participles. II. Medical misconstructions

Abstract

“Most of the occasions of disturbance in the world spring from grammar”, wrote Montaigne [ 11. Hyperbole perhaps, but insofar as grammatical infractions garble meaning or mar literary style, they can certainly create problems for the physicianauthor. One of these problems is the unattached participle, as exemplified in sentences cited here from published articles. As a verbal adjective, the participle is grammatically dependent on a noun in the main clause [2]. When the participle has no such grammatical relation, it violates a basic principle of English syntax and, in the process, often distorts the intended sense. Unattached, or dangling, participles mischievously intrude most often at the beginning of a sentence. In that position, they are expected to modify the subject of the principal clause, and when they do not, they are said to dangle. Danglers are caused by a lapse in concentration in the coherent pursuit of a thought from beginning to end of a sentence. The writer begins with one principal or agent in mind but, in midsentence, switches to another. The result is an extraneous grammatical unit: