Examples of absolute phrases with adverbs instead of participles
I'm looking for examples / explanation of absolute phrases with adverbs instead of participles.
What about the following:
- She walked into the room, gracefully.
Is the adverb, gracefully, an absolute phrase
An absolute phrase is a modifier (quite often a participle), or a modifier and a few other words, that attaches to a sentence or a noun, with no conjunction.
Obviously you would normally want to say
- She walked gracefully into the room
But I wondered if shifting the adverb like that made it absolute.
I am especially interested in whether any authority on grammar would claim it is an absolute phrase.
Solution 1:
Here are some examples:
- We fell asleep happy for once, our bellies full and our beds warm.
The newlyweds checked into the motel, unaware they'd never check out.
Jack and John strip off their shirts and run towards the lake, the happiest they'll ever be.
Aware that time was about up, I made a wild guess and hoped I was right.
Dressed to the nines, she walked gracefully into the room.
Her hat in hand, she walked gracefully into the room.
She walked gracefully into the room, neck-deep in grief but head held high.
Your example isn't an absolute phrase for a couple of reasons. The first is that a phrase, by definition, contains more than one word. "Gracefully" is only one word. The second is that an absolute phrase modifies the entire sentence, not just one word in the sentence. Since you say that "She gracefully walked into the room" is the sentence and don't mention that you're changing the meaning of the sentence but are merely moving "gracefully" to the end, it's clear that "gracefully" is only modifying "walked" because that's all it modifies in "She gracefully walked into the room." It is not modifying the entire sentence but still just the verb, appearing after the indirect object instead of before the verb being the only difference.
Per @Edwin Ashworth's request for source information:
"An absolute phrase is a group of words that modifies an independent clause as a whole." (https://www.thoughtco.com/absolute-phrase-grammar-1689049 )
"An absolute phrase is a grammatically independent group of words that serves to modify or add information to an entire sentence." (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Absolute-Phrases.htm )
Absolute Phrases - Definition: a group of words consisting of a noun or pronoun and a participle, that is attached to a sentence without a conjunction in order to modify it (https://prezi.com/fd85xqfskwaw/absolute-phrase/ )