OK, dangling participle vs. misplaced modifier… what’s the difference? I know they both ake for some funny reading…can you provide some examples? (…“exmaples?” I typoed! Must be a retired Toronto Maple Leafer?) - Jinx
Any modifier that appears to be modifying something other than what it is supposed to be, is a “misplaced modifier.” Among the numerous categories of them is the -ing (more rarely, the -ed) form of the verb used adjectivally but introducing a phrase, but hanging in a place where it fails to do what the speaker or writer intended. These are dangling participles, one species of misplaced modifier. Daniel’s lemon-fresh nudist cook is an example of the problems caused by a dangling participle. Other examples are the hypallage which CJJ* illustrated, and the misplaced “not” in the second example in my first post, which completely reverses the sentence’s intended meaning.
The silly examples to one side, such errors can give truly erroneous impressions. Follett illustrates with an enormously-complex sentence abstracted from an essayist writing about a biographer of Bret Harte, in which an enormously long subordinate-clause statement about the man the biographer is interviewing is, by something akin to the dangling-participle problem, apparently attributed to the biographer himself – and the statement is such that it could easily have meant either one; the truth only comes clear three paragraphs later in the essay, when a chance reference to the interviewee happens to make clear he was the guy about whom the subordinate clause was speaking.
Polycarp, you called the “eyes for you” example an excellent example, and then it seems later that you’re calling it a silly example.
Whatever its merits, I’m just wondering about the six different meanings. (I’ve been playing it in my head all day today wondering.) Humor an old guy.
Thanks. Sorry if this is a hijack.
I believe it was also Gracie Allen who said, “Up the street, the soldiers are marching down.”
And of course one was made into a song and an entire movie: Throw Momma from the train a kiss, a kiss.