Mind your language
I AM never happier than with some- thing easy like a steak and kidney pud- ding (can't go wrong) singing away on the stove and a volume of Skeat's Prin- ciples of English Etymology propped up on the cat's blanket, which for some reason has found its way onto the kitchen table.
I am parodying my own foibles, of course, but what I mean is that when a piece of hard grammar comes along it gives me the jitters.
And here comes one out of the sun at two o'clock from a German reader, Mr Goetz Hof, who is complaining about dangling participles in The Spectator. Whatever next?
This affliction, also known as hanging participle or unattached participle, is indeed illustrated by an extract from a recent book review in the dear old Speccy: 'Dashed off at speed and cover- ing many figures . .. in the Irish revival, this clever woman . . . provides many fascinating glimpses.. . . ' It is the book that was dashed off at speed, not the clever woman.
This sort of mistake is common in obituaries: 'Sent to sea at six, his mother was an opera singer.'
But there is a kind of apparent dan- gler that has to be allowed. 'Talking of blackguards, I saw the bishop in the baker's,' and many parallel construc- tions have become idiomatic. The dan- glers tend to be verbs of perception or speech ('Considering the circumstances '), but need not be ('Allowing for leeway ... ). Old Fowler says these par- ticiples have become adverbs or prepo- sitions, though I can't quite see that myself.
It is in the allowable category that one of Mr Hof s examples, taken from Low life, falls: 'Yesterday, racking my brains, it occurred to me'.. .
I am glad to find that Jeffrey Bernard's danglers are in fine fettle.
Dot Wordsworth
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