ABSOLUTE CONSTRUCTION

DEFINITION

The absolute construction does not occur as often as the other verbal construction, but its use in common enough to warrant more attention than it has received in most grammer books. Although many grammarians claim the absolute construction is found chiefly in literary English, actually it occurs just as frequently an conversational English.

In linguistics, an absolute construction is a grammatical construction standing apart from a normal or usual syntactical relation with other words or sentence elements. It can be a non-finite clause that is subordinate in form and modifies an entire sentence, an adjective or possessive pronoun standing alone without a modified substantive, or a transitive verb when its object is implied but not stated.  

Absolute constructions are not full clauses, with a full (inflected) verb. They are phrases. A clause has a full verb, while an absolute construction does not.

 (1) An absolute construction, however, always has a noun or noun phrase.

1) An absolute construction, however, always has a noun or noun phrase. For example,  -the horsemen raced down the hill toward the settlers, their guns at the ready. 2) Absolutes often have a non-finite form of a verb. for example,  a present or past participle. When there is a present or past participle, you can often add a "with," to turn the phrase into a prepositional phrase that acts as an adverbial.       examples ("with" added, in brackets) For example , -[With] Our hopes dashed, we continued south. Our track soon converged with a major piste -just south of an airstrip. With the increased use, came horrendous ... -He stopped, [with] his hands shaking uncontrollably. I then imagined my own wife, son and young daughters dying that way and shuddered. ...   3)Often, to make an absolute phrase into a full clause, all you have to do is provide some form of the verb "be," plus a connector. For example (non-Google), For example, "”a. Her lawn totally brown from the drought (absolute), she decided to convert it into a rock garden "”b. Her lawn was totally brown from the drought (full clause), so she decided to make it into a rock garden