Participle Phrases as Adverbs

Question

I'm teaching my daughter some grammar lessons and ended up a bit confused about how to analyze participle phrases such as "removing his coat" in the following sentence:

Removing his coat, Jack rushed to the river.

When I was in grammar school, I was taught that participle phrases act exclusively as adjectives. Thus, my first instinct was to say that "removing his coat" is a participle phrase modifying Jack. But upon reflection, this seems a bit odd. "Removing his coat" seems to tell us less about a property of Jack and more about the way he rushed. Thus, it would seem that the participle phrase is adverbial. Moreover, it is possible to move this participle phrase around in the sentence (for example, to the end) without affecting the meaning, which seems like further support for treating it as adverbial.

I did some research about the issue and ended up finding a lot of seemingly contradictory information. Many reputable sources seem to support what I was taught in school. For example, one college writing program describes a participle as "a verbal that is used as an adjective" and analyzes "removing his coat" as an adjective.

Yet other sources state that participle phrases can be either adverbial or adjectival and suggest that the participle phrase in my example sentence is an adverb. (See, for example here and here.)

Here's my question: are there two schools of thought on analyzing participle phrases? Is this one of those cases where prescriptive grammarians think about an issue differently than descriptive linguists?

Or is there a nuance I'm missing?

Answer 1

Removing his coat is a subordinate clause, one with the role of a depictive adjunct in the structure of the main clause.

These sorts of -ing clauses acting as adjuncts (traditional grammar's 'adverbial') in clause structure may denote cause, result, or, as in this case, describe a situation taking place concurrently.

Seeing that no one was there, he left. [cause]

He stumbled into the table, knocking over some glasses. [result]

Whistling a tune, he walked down the road. [depictive]

In the example provided, removing his coat has nothing whatsoever to do with rushed to the river but for that it occured at the same time, and may be reworded as:

Jack rushed to the river while he was removing his coat.

These are not adjectives as they may not be used predicatively:

*John became removing his coat.

Furthermore, seeing that there is a clear verb-object structure here, it would also be an error to classify this as an adverb as that would be confusing a category of word / phrase for a function in clause structure.

As far as exact terminology for this construction, different schools of analysis will have different ways of describing it. Relying on a collection of online sources is likely to leave one confused as there is no one commonly accepted framework.

Answer 2

If I may supplement the answer above so that people with old-fashioned terminology can connect it to what they and their childrens' school teachers are likely to know, it is perfectly possible to clothe things that are functionally adverbial in forms that are adjectival, for instance:

John, extremely adept at all types of puzzles, finished the cross-word before any of us.

Here the adjective "adept" serves to explain why John finished first, an "adverbial" function. Participles can also evolve to become prepositions, as in "regarding your letter of the 24th, your order will ship on...", or as the ancient Greek participle of "have" ekhon did, which evolved to mean essentially "with".

So, in older terminology, "removing his coat" is what would be called an "attendant circumstance", and its logical connection to "rushed to the river" could be expressed as "in order to move more quickly".

I, a dinosaur, would say that

Putting on an extra burst of speed, Usain passed his rival at the finish line.

is adverbial information cloaked in what is formally an adjectival phrase, since all participles are originally adjectives, and should continue to be interpreted so as long as possible. This will perhaps keep the formalists happy, if that is possible, but will not prevent the functionalists from doing their usual good work.