Cross posting there with Aiwendil, again, alas.
I have time now for only one quick point and must leave others to a later post. Aiwendil, you wrote the following about my comments on "Borne upon the wind, they heard the howling of wolves":
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I'm going to have to simply disagree with you on this and leave it at that (for it seems neither of us can produce proof). I was always under the impression that this is one of those "grammatical rules" invented by nineteenth century scholars to enforce what they took to be good style (along with rules against "split infinitives" and not ending sentences with prepositions).
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I haven't the time now to research the history of prescriptive grammars, but my understanding is that this kind of'grammatical rule' is not prescriptive, but based upon a requirement for logical association between clauses in a sentence. I don't know what kind of 'proof' you would want or accept, but here is an explanation based on functional syntactics.
I refer you to
A University Grammar of English, Randolph Quirk and Sidney Greenbaum, London: Longman, 1973. This is not, as I said, a prescriptive grammar, but derived from functional analysis, a standard in linquistics, which frowns upon the kind of prescriptive grammars you mention, Aiwendil (and which I mentioned also).
p. 329, chapter 11, The Complex Sentence, section 11.35, Non-finite and verbless clauses.
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If the subject is not actually expressed in a non-finite or verbless clause, it is assumed to be identical with the subject of the superordinate [main] clause:
When ripe, the oranges are picked and sorted.
He took up anthropology, stimulated by our enthusiasm.
She hesitated, being very suspicious, to open the door.
He opened his case, to look for a book.
Commonly, however, this 'attachment rule' is violated:
?Since leaving her, life has seemed empty.
[The ? refers to usage of doubtful acceptability, to use the phrasing in Symbols and Technical Conventions]
In this case, we would assume that the superordinate clause means 'Life has seemed empty to me and that the subject of the-ing clause is also first person. Such 'unattached' ('pendant' or 'dangling') clauses ae frowned on, however, and are totally unacceptable if the superordinate clause provides no means at all for identifying the subordinate subject. In the following sentence, for example, it canot be a dog:
*Reading the evening paper, a dog started barking.
[The * refers to unacceptable usage according to the table of Symbols and Technical Conventions.]
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In place of 'dangling' I used 'misplaced' because I thought that might be more clear.
Edit: typos and publishing info for the book.
[ November 11, 2003: Message edited by: Bęthberry ]