the phrase is a sort of
interjection or aside to the reader, restating what is assumed to be known, the work’s purpose.
Dashes or
parentheses might also have been used to set off this phrase,
depending on the degree of emphasis one wanted to accord it.
“The dog, tied to the tree, could not chase the squirrel The participial phrase
“tied to the tree can also be
seen as a phrase in apposition, adding nonessential information to the main sense of the sentence. In either case, as appositional or nonrestrictive phrase, the point is that being tied to the tree is not the cause of the dog’s being
unable to chase the squirrel, or the writer has chosen not to emphasize that possible reason for the dog’s inactivity. Removing the commas would suggest either that being tied to the tree kept the dog from chasing or, more grammatically,
that other dogs not tied to the tree also couldn’t
chase the squirrel, just as the one tied to the tree cant. See
appositive.“Rover, along
with the rest of the dogs, ran o .” Here the nonrestrictive phrase is prepositional. The choice of this sentence structure leads the reader to assume that the writer wants to call attention to Rover and thus has put Rover in the rst position in the sentence. One could have made the same statement with slightly di erent emphasis by saying, Along with the rest of the dogs, Rover ran o .” The nonrestrictive phrase is still marked by a comma, which would also be necessary because the prepositional phrase now starts the sentence. In either case, it is essential only to
understand that Rover ran o , and it is only of tangential interest that the rest of the dogs did so.
Share with your friends: 
