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"Thirsty, we drank. Hungry, we ate. Tired, we slept."

Is there a name for this form of writing? Is it a recognised literary device?

Lottie Murakami
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    The terse style may be referred to as "telegraphic". Though that term applies to any style of short, spartan sentences. – Hot Licks Jun 23 '15 at 12:26

4 Answers4

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Each individual sentence here contains an example of an absolute construction. Other examples are:

Its hair flowing in the wind, the horse raced along the beach.

Preoccupied with his thoughts of the fast-approaching tour of the Rockies, Bill did not notice the horse.

Its hair in glorious disarray, the horse raced along the beach.

Happy with her ice cream, Sally did not hear her mother calling.

The absolute clause may often be preceded by the preposition 'with' to show mere synchronicity (or perhaps reason).

Adjectives used in this role are understandably named 'absolute adjectives' (see Dr. Goodword’s Language Blog), but there is scope for confusion here due to ambiguity.

The absolute construction usually sounds unnatural with a bare adjective (especially a short one):

?Sad, he left.

Exhausted, he had to sit down.

Sad at not being picked, he left.

However, here, the repetition makes the whole acceptable, though obviously in an unusual style, more suitable for poetry than natural-sounding narrative.

Edwin Ashworth
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    For it to be an absolute adjectival construction, the adjective should not describe the main noun. See http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/languages/classical/latin/tchmat/grammar/whprax/w24-aa.html I'm not convinced that this answer is correct, I'm afraid -- although I'm prepared to be persuaded before downvoting. – Andrew Leach Jun 24 '15 at 10:22
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    Regarding “natural-sounding narrative”, forget not that outside today’s truncated thoughts of 142-character text messages, the classical figures of rhetoric still find homes beyond poetry alone. A stirring speech by Churchill or Kennedy, a Sunday-morning sermon or a graveside eulogy, a prepared graduation speech or a call to action about desperate social issues: in all these places and more will crafted prose by gifted writers elevate the tone above the idle chit-chat of locker room banter. Oratory is not dead. – tchrist Jun 24 '15 at 10:34
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    The usage is given say at University of Sheffield: User-defined Dictionary (Beta): Absolute adjectives do not belong to a larger construction (aside from a larger adjective phrase), and typically modify either the subject of a sentence or whatever noun or pronoun they are closest to; for example, happy is an absolute adjective in "The boy, happy with his lollipop, did not look where he was going." Once again, terminologies seem not to correspond (though isn't your reference to usage in Latin grammar?) – Edwin Ashworth Jun 24 '15 at 10:53
  • @tchrist I forgot not. I thought I'd let you fill in some other points along the continuum. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 24 '15 at 11:04
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    My first reaction was that of @AndrewLeach, that the "absolute" adjective phrase does not modify the subject. But I learned that meaning of "absolute" from Latin, as maybe Andrew did. From the other sources listed here, it's clear that "absolute" has been defined in (a variety of) different ways for English. – LarsH Jun 24 '15 at 13:08
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    I'm afraid this is not correct. An absolute construction does not modify any (pro)noun. That difference is crucial. This answer lumps multiple examples of absolute constructions together with non-absolute constructions, without making the proper distinction. The word you're looking for is appositive, not absolute here. Andrew Leach has it right in his comment above. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jun 06 '21 at 15:17
  • You're using different terminology, probably CGEL-based; this (the lumping or splitting of what should be called 'absolute constructions' in English) has been discussed here before. CGEL probably has the hypernym adjuncts. // I've only seen 'appositive' used with paired elements A and B either one of which can be dropped (possibly with adjusted punctuation) leaving a valid matrix sentence. Thus 'He scourged – whipped – the man'. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 06 '21 at 16:23
  • @EdwinAshworth: CGEL? Never! (The term absolute is a well established term with a long tradition. Of course one may use whichever terminology one prefers, but I would consider this wrong by all classifications I have ever seen. The essence of "absolute" is that it does not modify any noun. The word means "not tied (to any other constituent)", as opposed to phrases that do modify other constituents.) – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jun 06 '21 at 22:03
  • Wiki: Because the non-finite clause, called the absolute clause (or simply the absolute), is not semantically attached to any single element in the sentence, it is easily confused with a dangling participle.[4] The difference is that the participial phrase of a dangling participle is intended to modify a particular noun, but is instead erroneously attached to a different noun, whereas a participial phrase serving as an absolute clause is not intended to modify any noun at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_construction – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jun 06 '21 at 22:04
  • From that Wiki article: ' ... 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 ... an adjective ... standing alone without a modified substantive.' We're obviously not talking sentence fragments here ('What colour is it?' ... 'Red.') So how else can this be realised, other than with eg 'Exhausted, he quit'? ... standing apart from a normal or usual syntactical relation with other words or sentence elements. Obviously the adjective references something. Not prenominally, ... – Edwin Ashworth Jun 07 '21 at 16:34
  • postnominally, or predicatively, though. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 07 '21 at 16:34
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    @EdwinAshworth: Okay, then someone added something to the Wiki article which is, in my opinion, not correct. We already have the word appositive for that. // As you say, an absolute must not have a syntactical relation with other constituents in the sentence, which the single adjective clear has. That's exactly what the word normally means in grammar, isn't it? – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jun 09 '21 at 11:45
  • I cited that part of the Wiki article years ago. // 'Exhausted, he sat on the log' has 'Exhausted' as a syntactically non-necessary element. The matrix sentence stands alone perfectly well, with precisely the same meaning. Yes, more information is added (description and quite possibly reason), but the adjective is used absolutely. (There are, confusingly, three meanings for 'absolute adjective'; (1) as opposed to comparative or superlative / (2) non-surpassable (eg supreme, perfect) / (3) as opposed to [an adjective used in a] predicative, attributive, postnominal usage. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 09 '21 at 11:59
  • The Sheffield link now has problems; the quote is repeated at New World Encyclopedia: Absolute adjectives. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 11 '24 at 17:02
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Your quoted line makes literary use of repetition, parallel structures and change of normal word order and shortening and parataxis. In normal language the line would be:

We drank when we were thirsty,and ate when we were hungry, and slept when we were tired.

A list of sixty traditional rhetorical devices: http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm

Recognized literary device? Recognized or not, the line has a stylistic effect, out of the ordinary, it draws attention, stays in your mind, pleases, and is the art of all great narrator talents.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/?title=Rhetoric

rogermue
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Guess it comes from latin construct named ablative absolute:

Tarquinio regnante, Pythagoras venit.

(Tarquinius reigning, Pythagoras came. or When Tarquinius was king, Pythagoras came.)

The food being good, they ate well.

moonwave99
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  • If the subject, instead of Tarquinius, had been first person singular, that pronoun is usually absorbed into the verb form. But the participle regnante has no room inside for a pronoun, so what happens to the "I" in that case? – Ralph Dratman Jun 23 '15 at 22:57
  • @RalphDratman It would be "Me regnante". See for example "Nobis quiescentibus, repente venunt hostes" ["As we were sleeping, suddenly the enemies came"]. – moonwave99 Jun 24 '15 at 10:40
  • I don't think this is the same construction. Your Latin example is ablative absolute ("an independent phrase with a noun... both words forming a clause grammatically unconnected with the rest of the sentence"). But the examples in the question don't have a noun, and they share the subject with the main clause of the sentence. – LarsH Jun 24 '15 at 13:13
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Comments preserved:

  • The usage is given say at University of Sheffield: User-defined Dictionary (Beta) [The Sheffield link now has problems; the quote is repeated at New World Encyclopedia: Absolute adjectives.] :
    • Absolute adjectives do not belong to a larger construction (aside from a larger adjective phrase), and typically modify either the subject of a sentence or whatever noun or pronoun they are closest to; for example, happy is an absolute adjective in
      • "The boy, happy with his lollipop, did not look where he was going."

Once again, terminologies seem not to correspond (though isn't [Andrew Leach's] reference to usage in Latin grammar?)

...............

  • [Some use] different terminology, perhaps CGEL-based; this (the lumping or splitting of what should be called 'absolute constructions' in English) has been discussed here before. CGEL probably has the hypernym adjuncts. // I've only seen 'appositive' used with paired elements A and B either one of which can be dropped (possibly with adjusted punctuation) leaving a valid matrix sentence. Thus 'He scourged – whipped – the man'.

...............

  • From the Wikipedia article mentioned in a comment:

    • ' ... 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 ... an adjective ... standing alone without a modified substantive.'

We're obviously not talking sentence fragments here ('What colour is it?' ... 'Red.') So how else can this be realised, other than with say

  • 'Exhausted, he quit'       ? ... standing apart from a normal or usual syntactical relation with other words or sentence elements. Obviously the adjective references something. Not prenominally, postnominally, or predicatively, though. Obviously whoever 'he' is ... not a covert referent.

.............

  • 'Exhausted, he sat on the log' has 'Exhausted' as a syntactically non-necessary element. The matrix sentence stands alone perfectly well, with precisely the same meaning. Yes, more information is added (description and quite possibly reason), but the adjective is used absolutely.

(There are, confusingly, three meanings for 'absolute adjective';

  • (1) as opposed to comparative or superlative /
  • (2) non-surpassable (eg supreme, perfect) /
  • (3) as opposed to [an adjective used in a] predicative, attributive, postnominal usage.)
Edwin Ashworth
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