Modifier

Modifiers as Optional Constituents

There are two types of modifiers:

Attributive modifiers that modify a noun or a noun phrase as an adjective (key factors, miserable world), a descriptive prepositional phrase (the man across the street), a verbless clause (a face familiar to everyone), or a nonfinite participial clause (the question being asked, the plan discussed with the team), a relative clause (the school we visited). Attributive modifiers normally cannot be detached from their heads, having a fixed position either immediately before or after the head. As such, attributive modifiers are more defining (essential) to the meaning of the head, unless they are supplemental (parenthetical) and, therefore, inessential to the meaning of the head, as the examples below demonstrate:

Defining (essential) modifier:

She loved to talk about her sister who lived in Paris.

Supplemental (inessential) modifier:

She loved to talk about her sister, who lived in Paris.

Defining (restrictive) modifiers limit (restrict) the meaning of the head to a specific, narrowed set out of all the possible sets sharing the same head.

Adverbial modifiers, or more commonly adverbials, modify a verb (suddenly came, kissed me passionately), a noun/noun phrase (man enough, so yesterday, approximately five days), a pronoun (just me), an adjective (very beautiful), a preposition (almost up), or another adverb/adverbial (very beautifully, later today) as adverbials (adverbs) or adverbial clauses. In contrast with attributive modifiers, adverbial modifiers are mobile, which makes them more optional and descriptive.

Verb-modifying adverbials tend to be placed immediately next to the head verb they modify, either before or after the verb. However, both attributive modifiers and verb-modifying adverbials may be detached from the heads and delayed to a later position in the sentence, as a formally independent constituent. Such detached & delayed modifiers are sometimes referred to as depictives (for attributive modifiers) or elaboratives (for adverbials).

The detached and delayed part, torn away from its head, assumes a greater degree of autonomy and significance. As such, it's pronounced with a stronger emphasis. Detached depictives or adverbials are more loosely related to the modified head than non-detached modifiers. They are separated from the rest of the sentence by intonation in speaking and by commas in writing.

Fiction writers and journalists often employ this literary technique to either emphasize the delayed modifier, to disconnect it from the preceding word, to create an emphatic effect, to generate suspense, or to otherwise expand the detached constituent's scope to wider, sentential scope.

For example: the sentence without detachment has only one sentence stress, on the last constituent, the depictive full of apologies,while the sentence with the detached depictive has two sentence stresses:

The manager approached us full of apologies.

The manager approached us FULL OF APOLOGIES.

The manager approached us, full of apologies.

The manager APPROACHED us, FULL OF APOLOGIES.

What’s more, the delaying and the divided emphasis in the second sentence changes its meaning. The first sentence conveys that the manager approached with the purpose of apologizing, while the second sentence does not suggest that. It does not make clear whether the apologizing was intended for those approached.

In English, the peripheral depictive can be inverted and used as a topicalized sentence-initial element, with similar, wider, scope over the sentence, to provided background information:

Full of apologies, the manager approached us.

Just as with delayed adverbials, delayed depictives acquire an adverbial sense, and with that the ability to shift and extend its scope.

Delaying with a comma thus may have a disambiguating function: without the comma, the sentence below would mean that Lenehan laughed noiselessly for the second time. Instead, the intended meaning is that Lenehan laughed for the second time, which happened to be without any noise:

Lenehan laughed again, noiselessly.

— James Joyce, Dubliners

Detachment and delaying can also involve adverbial clauses. In another interesting example, the disconnecting and delaying comma substantially changes the meaning:

And why are they only counting them when the place is cleared?

And why are they only counting them, when the place is cleared?

In the first sentence, the temporal adverbal clause is a restrictive to the meaning of the main clause: the speaker asks as to why the count is performed only when place is cleared. In the second sentence, the when-clause acquires a concessive meaning, meaning that the speaker wonders as to why the count is performed, now that the place is cleared.