1) Too tall to enter the room, he remained standing at the door. 2) Whether successful or unsuccessful, he always puts his best efforts in his work. 3) To nervous to move, she stood on the floor, trembling. 4) Laughed at, they lose heart. 5) He declares the meeting open.
This are the some examples of verbless clause. I want to know more about verbless clause. I searched in net a lot, but unfortunately what I found were not sufficient. Those were not enriched with proper description. I want to know the ways used to express verbless clauses into other way. I want to learn how these clauses are being formed. Please mention some useful links/PDF files that are related to this topic and able to fulfill my demand.
142k 45 45 gold badges 295 295 silver badges 521 521 bronze badges asked Mar 11, 2015 at 15:35 Nazmul Hassan Nazmul Hassan 508 5 5 gold badges 12 12 silver badges 20 20 bronze badges I don't see any "verbless clause" in example #5. Why have you included it? Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 15:53The five examples that you provide are all omitting the verb to be.
1) [Because he is] too tall to enter the room, he remained standing at the door.
2) Whether [he is] successful or unsuccessful, he always puts his best efforts in his work.
3) [She is] too nervous to move, she stood on the floor, trembling.
4) [When they are] laughed at, they lose heart.
5) He declares the meeting [to be] open.
A verbless clause . . . is considered a clause because it is dealing with a separate piece of information in relation to the main clause. For example, in the sentence,
In the interests of the local children, the council should reconsider its decision.
there are two separate pieces of information: the main clause—the council should reconsider its decision; and a dependent clause that deals with issues that interest local children. In this clause, however, the verb has been nominalised resulting in a verbless clause. Verbless clauses are different from adverbial phrases. The latter provide some information to do with the time, place, or manner in which something happens within an existing clause. Verbless clauses, on the other hand, provide a separate piece of information outside of an existing clause.
(Peter Knapp and Megan Watkins, Genre, Text, Grammar: Technologies for Teaching and Assessing Writing. UNSW Press, 2005) [formatting mine]