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I scooped her up. Her belly fit snugly into my palm ; a low continual grunting pulsed through her body .

These sentences have been recited from the following link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/2004/07/11/the-goddess-of-flowers/f0ca69bf-fb03-47e2-bd6a-460073fbdf52/

Here, the subject of "a low continual grunting pulsed through her body" is different from the subject of "Her belly fit snugly into my palm". I think the verb of "a low continual...." is "pulsed". Since the subjects are not same, I thought, -ing will be added to "pulse", and "a low continual ........" will act as an absolute construction. But it did not happen. Both of these two clauses are working independently. There might have another reason to add '-ing' with 'pulse', because it was occurring continuously through the body of pig.

Please tell why the later part is not acting as an absolute construction, i.e why -ing has not been added to 'pulse'.

Thanks to everyone.

Nazmul Hassan
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1 Answers1

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It's perfectly fine to turn that clause into an absolute:

Her belly fit snugly into my palm, a low continual grunting pulsing through her body.

However, the author just chose not to, and instead made it a separate independent clause.

Reasons? Probably stylistic: to me, the gerund and participle right next to each other ("grunting pulsing") feels awkward since they're different constructions using the same form. Two participles would be fine, or two gerunds, or a gerund and a past participle, but not a gerund and a present participle. And the rhythm of the sentence is different if you change the finite verb to a participle. Perhaps it just sounded better to them this way.

Draconis
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