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While studying for an English test, I encountered a sentence: "Raised the son of a former slave, he came from humble beginnings."

I could figure out the meaning of the sentence, but what confuses me is the structure of the participial phrase located in the first part of the sentence.

I searched for similar sentence structures, and I could find out this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoel_III,_Count_of_Nantes

It says here that "He was raised the son of..."

So my question is this: is there something omitted in the phrase? The way I see it, it looks like something as AS is omitted: Raised (AS) the son of ...

If not, is there any other use of the word RAISE I don't know about?

I'd really appreciate it if you could help me with this grammatical question.

Thank you so much, and happy new year to you all.

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    What exactly are you asking, how else to express this sentence's meaning, or the usage of "raise"? Frame challenge: no word is omitted, but "raised" is needless. If he was raised the son of a former slave, he has always been the son of a former slave, so there is no point in "raised" putting focus on the man's childhood as opposed to his adult life. And "raised" serves no other purpose in this sentence either. So it might just as well be "The son of a former slave, he came from humble beginnings."
    – Rosie F
    Commented Jan 1, 2023 at 6:26
  • Reordering, we simply have ... "He, raised the son of a former slave, came from humble beginnings." No as needed for the parenthetical expression.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented Jan 1, 2023 at 15:44
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    And "raised" serves no other purpose in this sentence either Hmmm, methinks it serves a literary purpose creating resonances that its omission doesn't create.
    – High Performance Mark
    Commented Jan 31, 2023 at 11:35
  • Revisiting. // 'Raised the son of a former slave, he came from humble beginnings.' is a sentence I wouldn't use, as it smacks at least faintly of incongruous redundancy. I'd go with 'He came from humble beginnings: he was raised the son of a former slave.' I can see contexts where the rearranged 'He was raised the son of a former slave – he came from humble beginnings.' might be preferred. But I think the acknowledgement of the closeness of the statements is better acknowledged (which the colon or dash do better than the en-clause).
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jan 31, 2023 at 17:34

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In English the use of "as" is optional. You may add it or omit it as desired. So the answer to your question would seem to be, yes, "as" had been omitted, without error. This is not to be confused with using "as" to signify simultaneous events (eg, "i got wet as i ran through the rain").

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  • Thank you so much for your kind and speedy answer! But I have one more question: is there any rule about the omission of AS? Or is it just a common usage that I should be familiar with?
    – Kyle S
    Commented Jan 1, 2023 at 4:27
  • See my edit above for when not to omit "as"
    – fertilizerspike
    Commented Jan 1, 2023 at 4:29
  • Okay, thank you so much. I really appreciate your kind reply :)
    – Kyle S
    Commented Jan 1, 2023 at 4:35
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    @KyleS A person can be raised a Catholic, and an opponent's wager can be raised a dollar. In the first case, it can be read as if it had a to be or an as there if you like; in any case, it's a noun phrase being used as an optional adjunct. But in the second case, it's a verb with two separate required noun-phrase arguments, only one of which passivizes (the person, not the amount).
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Jan 1, 2023 at 5:01
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    'Raised [as] the son of a former slave' are both acceptable. But in the similar-looking 'Seen/Known as the son of a carpenter', the 'as' cannot be deleted. With 'His backside was as green as grass', only the first 'as' may be omitted. The rules seem more complicated than stated, fs.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jan 1, 2023 at 17:31

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