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I'm reading about commas, and am finding it fairly difficult to absorb.

How can I decide whether a modifier is restrictive? Google says that restrictive modifiers say something essential to the sentence. So,

  • My brother Mark, who lives in London, is visiting on Saturday.

would be free because the modifying phrase "who lives in London" doesn't further delimit who I mean.

But what if the noun phrase is generic? E.g.,

  • By the car a man, holding a bag, is stood by himself.

On the one hand the sentence hasn't exhaustively defined the man, so the modifier further defines him. On the other, the parenthesised phrase would usually not help us decide which man is being talked about.

  • Do you mean: "By the car is a man standing by himself" ?? – tchrist May 21 '16 at 05:16
  • @tchrist not obvious to me what's wrong with e.g. (intransitive) To support oneself on the feet in an erect position, using the past participle as an adjective. –  May 21 '16 at 06:25
  • Ditch the commas. The non-finite clause holding a bag functions as post-modifier to "man": the NP a man holding a bag identifies who was stood by the car. Only supplements (inherently non-restrictive) require commas. – BillJ May 21 '16 at 10:22
  • What's wrong is that you can't say is stood like that. – tchrist May 21 '16 at 15:12
  • "Stood" is used that way in colloquial BrE (mainly in the north), but it's definitely non-standard. – BillJ May 21 '16 at 16:48
  • @BillJ i can't find the term "supplement" on wikipedia, can you write an answer? –  May 21 '16 at 17:01
  • @tchirst that isn't helpful, really –  May 21 '16 at 17:01
  • Briefly, supplements are loosely attached expressions set off by intonation and usually punctuation eg. commas or dashes presenting supplementary non-integrated content. Unlike modifying adjuncts, they are presented as a separate unit of information, parenthetical or additional and hence are inherently non-restrictive. This may help link – BillJ May 21 '16 at 17:40
  • if you're serious that you can't use adjectives like that, then i should ask a question about it –  May 21 '16 at 17:41
  • @BillJ if there is no rule, then is it a matter of style, or just difficult grammar? –  May 21 '16 at 17:53
  • Did you follow the link I sent you? – BillJ May 21 '16 at 18:14
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. –  May 21 '16 at 18:23

2 Answers2

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What matters is whether the extra information is essential (restrictive clause) or unessential (unrestrictive clause) for the meaning of the sentence.

The following example should clarify this (taken from Effective Scientific Writing by Bolt and Bruins).

  1. The students, who were late, could not get in.
  2. The students who were late could not get in.

In sentence 1, "who were late" is between commas and is therefore deemed not essential. So this means that all the students could not get in, and all the students were late.

In sentence 2, "who were late" is not between commas and is therefore a restrictive clause (essential). So this means that only the students who were late could not get in.

Regarding your first sentence, "who lives in London" is unrestrictive and should therefore be placed between commas. Similarly in the second sentence.

If in the second sentence you were mentioning a man in a group, the extra info "who is holding a bag" becomes restrictive (otherwise it is unclear who you are talking about).

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Find the most natural paraphrase in which the modifier is in a separate, coordinated clause. If that clause comes first, the modifier is restrictive, because it is part of the presupposed background assumptions. But if the modifier is in the last clause, then it is non-restrictive, because it's content is being asserted rather than presupposed.

For your example (amended),

By the car a man, holding a bag, stood by himself.

we get

By the car a man stood by himself, and the man was holding a bag.

where the modifier is in the last clause, which identifies it as non-restrictive. Putting the modifier in the first clause is not even possible, because in

A man was holding a bag, and by the car a man stood by himself.

the sense is different.

However, with "the man" as subject of "stood", we get a different result,

A man was holding a bag, and by the car the man stood by himself.

which tells us that in a corresponding definite noun phrase, a modifier may be restrictive:

By the car, the man holding a bag stood by himself.

My answer is patterned after the analysis in Sandra (Annear) Thompson's OSU dissertation.

Greg Lee
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