1

As the day drew to a close, Norwegians continued to pay their tribute to the dead, adding to the carpet of flowers outside the cathedral.

I just read this and I wondered what adding to means here, or if it does not means anything, what's the function of this phrase in the sentence? How would one usually use this phrase?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
  • 26,528
Dylan Zhu
  • 171

3 Answers3

1

The meaning might be clearer as:

As the day drew to a close, Norwegians continued to add to the carpet of flowers outside the cathedral, paying their tribute to the dead.

Does that help?

Suzie NYC
  • 202
1

"Adding to the carpet of flowers outside the cathedral" is called an adverbial present participle.

An adverbial participle comes from an adverbial dependent clause.

Subject(main) + Verb(main) CONJUNCTION subject + verb.

--> Subject(main) + Verb(main) verb+ing.

However, when we change the dependent clause into a participle, before we take out the subject in the dependent clause and put that -ing after the verb, we must check that both subjects are the same.

Thus, we can safely rewrite your sentence like the below:

As the day drew to a close, Norwegians continued to pay their tribute to the dead as they added to the carpet of flowers outside the cathedral.

So, this is how I would translate/understand the sentence: Norwegians continued to pay their tribute to the dead as they "filled" the carpet of flowers outside the cathedral.

N.R. in Seoul
  • 645
0

More of the same thing that is addition already there In addition to

In this context 'adding to' implies that there is already,in this case, a carpet of flowers. 'Adding to' implies that the Norwegians will be putting more flowers with the ones already there.

It is time to eat! Mother is setting the food on the table, adding to the feast.

More info here: http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/add-to

And here: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/phrasal-verb

Scritter
  • 74