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Using Nominative Absolutes in Vocab Sentences
There aren’t a lot of adults who know what nominative absolutes are, and it’s always fun to know stuff adults don’t know!
A nominative absolute is a different way to join two sentences. The sentences do have to be pretty closely related.
Start with the two sentences.
The horse stood quietly in the corner of the field.Keep the subject of the second sentence (which, by the way, is where the word “nominative” comes from since the subject will be in the nominative case). Change the verb in the second sentence to an —ing participle. Join the altered second sentence (which is now a nominative absolute) to the first sentence with a comma. You can put the nominative absolute at the end or the beginning of the sentence. Just make sure it reads well.
Its tail twitched flies off its back.
The horse stood quietly in the corner of the field,More examples:
its tail twitching flies off its back.
The teacher read aloud from the goriest section of Beowulf.
The students listened with rapt attention.
The teacher read aloud from the goriest section of Beowulf,
the students listening with rapt attention.
The band blared out the notes to the march.
The audience clapped and stomped in time to the music.
The audience clapping and stomping in time to the music,If you have a pronoun as a subject to the second sentence, it stays in the nominative case in the nominative absolute. (Nominative case pronouns are the ones that can be used as the subject to a sentence: I, you, he, she, it, we, and they). Notice how the verb gets changed!
the band blared out the notes to the march.
Naomi stammered and stumbled as she gave a speech.
She was nervous about talking in front of a crowd.
Naomi stammered and stumbled as she gave a speech,
she being nervous about talking in front of a crowd.
10.30.2009. 01:46
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