Is it grammatical to use a participle phrase with a different subject from the preceding clause? [duplicate]

Question

As I understand it, the standard use of a participle phrase is something like,

The man walked into the room smoking a cigarette.

In this case, the subject for the participle phrase smoking a cigarette is given by the preceding clause as man. But it's common to see people write sentences like,

The man walked into the room, smoke coming from his cigarette.

In this case, the participle has cigarette for its subject. And that's weird because, in this sentence, "cigarette" has no verb. It's just a noun being modified by this participle. So the form of the sentence

The man walked into the room, smoke coming from his cigarette

is equivalent, I think, to

The man walked into the room, cigarette.

On its face this is totally ungrammatical.

However this latter kind of sentence is very common, and often it doesn't sound too bad. It's definitely a clunk-prone sentence form — especially when the participle phrase is really disconnected from the preceding clause, as in

The man walked into the room, snow gathering on the windows

— but it often works well.

I don't have much technical knowledge of grammar so this is past the frontier of my understanding. I'm really curious to hear a take on this sentence form from someone who's more knowledgeable than me.

Answer 1

Yes, it is grammatical to do so. Among other labels, such participle clauses have been called "detached participles" (Sandra Thompson) and "free participles" (Gary Miller). They are types of supplements (Huddleston and Pullum) or "free adjuncts" (Bernd Kortmann).

There are a couple of problems with your premise. The subject of the participle clause is "smoke" (not "cigarette"). You may have meant to equate the following two sentences:

(1) The man walked into the room, smoke coming from his cigarette.
(2) The man walked into the room, smoke.

(2) is not ungrammatical just because of it's structure; it's ungrammatical because a supplement must refer, explicitly or implicitly, to the clause it supplements. So "his" in "his cigarette" in (1) refers to "the man". "Smoke", on it's own, doesn't refer to anything.

Here are some examples of supplements:

• The man walked into the room, a dark room. (Noun phrase.)
• The man walked into the room, his cigarette in his mouth. (Verbless clause.)
• The man walked into the room, his cigarette dangling from his mouth. (Participle clause.)
• The man walked into the room, a cold draft of air blowing in from the open door. (Participle clause.)

In the first three examples, the references to the preceding clause (that is, to the room or the man) are explicit. In the fourth example, it is implicit (the air is blowing into the room from the door of the room that the man walked through).

Such constructions are ubiquitous.