The society is yet nascent, lacking power to support its members.
Is the comma required after nascent?
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1 Answer
The society is yet nascent, lacking power to support its members.
Not using it makes the reading mere nonsense. Using it provides the clue to the existence of a well defined constituent ("lacking power to support its members"), an -ing clause.
This clause looks like is a supplemetive clause and those clauses don't always have to be separated from the main clause by a comma. Here is an example.
(CoGEL § 15.62) I caught the boy waiting for my daughter.
I boy while I was waiting for my daughter.' [supplementive clause]
'I caught the boy in the act of waiting for my daughter.'[verb complementation]
'I caught the boy who was waiting for my daughter.' [postmodification
However, the semantic relationship between "lacking power to support its members" and "The society is yet nascent" is not definable. It is of the following sort, which shows by its simplicity the unusal aspect of such sentences.
- The jogger went by, missing an arm.
"Lacking power to support its members" is not semantically speaking a restriction on "the society". It follows that the -ig clause is not a postmodification.
Sometimes a comma may indicate a different intonation.
(CoGEL § 15.62)
The manager APPRÒACHED US, SMÌLING.
The manager approached us SMÌLING.
(CoGEL § 15.60) When adverbial participle clauses and adverbial verbless clauses are not introduced by a subordinator, there may be considerable indeterminacy as to the semantic relationship to be inferred.
In conclusion I believe this is not a well formed English sentence.
This following one would be.
- The society is yet nascent, having sprung from nothing only last year.
- The society is yet nascent, as it sprung from nothing only last year.
