EXPLANATION What is a participle and how can we accidentally 'dangle' it? Examine these sentences:
- We were happy.
- We were driving down the street.
- We were driven down the street.
In the first sentence, happy is an adjective qualifying we. In the next two sentences, while driving and driven also appear to be adjectives qualifying we, they are actually part of the verbs were driving and were driven. Words such as driving and driven are called participles. (They participate in the verb.) The Latin participium means sharing, participating, so a participle shares features of both the verb and of an adjective.
Participles appear in these situations:
- after verbs: were driving, has taken
- as adjectives before nouns: driving rain, driven student
- introducing participial phrases: flying back from Shanghai
A participial phrase acts in a very similar way to an adjectival phrase (which is why participial phrases have been placed after adjectival phrases in English Toolkit): they both qualify nouns.
There are present participles and past participles. Present participles end in -ing, e.g. flying, driving. The most common endings for past participles are -ed and -en (were placed, were driven) but there are other possibilities, as in:
were caught, were lit, had flown, had shrunk, were sunk, was seen
In summary, if a participle introduces a phrase, we call the phrase a participial phrase. Participial phrases qualify nouns in the same way that adjectival phrases qualify nouns. Now, how does a participial phrase end up dangling?
In the typical error, the participial phrase is Flying back from Adelaide. Because that phrase has been placed next to the wrong noun, 'turbulence', the impression is given that the turbulence was flying. This is amusing but how do we correct it? We place the phrase next to the correct noun. Unfortunately, the sentence doesn't tell us who was flying - my family, the passengers, I, we ...? The participial phrase has been left dangling without a noun or pronoun to refer to; so to correct it, we have to insert an appropriate noun or pronoun, for example: Flying back from Adelaide, we experienced unpleasant turbulence over Broken Hill.