Unusual model of clause

Question

How this sentence "The weather being very bad, we did not start the journey" is reduced? I cannot understand what structure is applied for the clause "the weather being very bad".

It is old fashioned. Today, we would say: As the weather was very bad, we did not start the journey. — Lambie, May 09 '21 at 16:09
Does this answer your question? Can a present participle follow a subject? It's an absolute clause. From Wikipedia: 'In linguistics, an absolute construction is a grammatical construction standing apart from a normal or usual syntactical relation with other words or sentence elements.
Example Usages:

“This being the case, let us go” /

"The referee having finally arrived, the game began".... ' — Edwin Ashworth, May 09 '21 at 16:09
The clause "The weather being very bad" is a a supplement, more specifically an absolute construction. It qualifies as an absolute by being non-finite with a subject and subordinate in form but with no syntactic link to the main clause. — BillJ, May 09 '21 at 17:20
See also What's the underlying grammatical structure of this sentence with three instances of “it” and two of “being”? — FumbleFingers, May 09 '21 at 18:15

LPH · Answer 1 · 2021-05-09T19:30:44.157

This part of the sentence is a non finite clause; the reason for this name is that the verb form is one of the non finite form, (in other words, a form that is not conjugated) (CoGEL, p. 993 § 14.6). Only the relevant clause structure is considered below.

(CoGEL 14.6) The nonfinite clause may be with or without a subject. The classes of nonfinite verb phrase serve to distinguish four structural classes of nonfinite verb clauses:
(i) TO-INFINITIVE […]
(ii) BARE INFINITIVE […]
(iii) -ING PARTICIPLE […]
♦ without subject: Leaving the room, he tripped over the mat.
♦ with subject: Her aunt having left the room, I asked Ann for some personal help.
When the subject of -ing clauses is expressed, it is often introduced by a preposition:
♦ With the audience turning restive, the chairman curtailed his long introduction.
(iv) -ED PARTICIPLE […]

The weather being very bad, we did not start the journey.

From the above, it follows that this is an ing participle clause with a subject (weather).

The function of the clause is adverbial of contingency expressing the reason.

Because the weather was very bad, we did not start the journey.

This appears to be fairly clear from the following.

Nonfinite Clauses. An analysis of to-infinitives and -ing participles in newspaper articles from “The Guardian”

2.2.5 Adverbial

All types of nonfinite clauses can be used as adverbials. […]
-ing participle clauses are of two types […]. Those of the first type have an explicit subject; those of the second do not. The understood subject is identical to the subject of the main clause. They may be introduced by a subordinator. (Aarts 1988:167)

-ing participle: “The referee being ill, the match had to be postponed.” (Aarts 1988:167)

Unusual model of clause

1 Answers1