Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[VNSP]

Hi,

I am a student from Cambodia. I have a certain problem which related to the part of speech in this below sentence:

While washing my hands,I noticed that I had a cut on my finger.

So, in this above example, what is the part of speech of the underlinded phrase? Is it an adverb phrase which modified the verb "noticed" because it is located after the preposition "while"? Or is it just a participle phrase which functioned as adjective; modified subject "I"?

Thanks in advance!!

[asterix]

I am by no means an expert but it seems to me that this is a dependent adverbial clause.
It is also an elliptical clause, which is a kind of dependent clause where its subject, and often its predicate, are omitted, but can be inferred from the independent (main) clause.
SO: While I was wahing my hands, I noticed that I had a cut on my finger, becomes: While washing my hands etc....