Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[hela]

Dear members,

Would you please tell me how would you analyse the syntactic structure of the underlined clause and how should I understand it?

I was dreaming of running, and playing and shouting, but the vivid image of Granny's old, white, wrinkled, grim face, framed by a halo of tumbling black hair, lying upon a huge feather pillow, made me afraid.

What is lying on the pillow her hair or her face?

Many thanks,
Hela

[CP]

Stripping it down a bit, it seems that the writer is saying "Granny's face, framed by a halo of hair and lying on a pillow," so both "framed" (past participle) and "lying" (present participle) are used to commence adjectival phrases modifying "face."

If there were no comma after "hair," I might think that possibly it is the hair that was lying on the pillow, but even so, the face is framed by the halo of hair, so only some of the hair is on the pillow.
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb

[hela]

Thank you very much, CP

And what kind of clause/phrase is it? Participle? non-defining relative?

[Anuradha Chepur]

It is a participle phrase, apparently.
Participle phrases can be converted into full relatives:
The boy standing under the tree is a singer.
The boy who is standing under the tree is a singer.
But what intrigues me is in the situation you gave, we may be unable to convert the participle into a full relative. May be because it is only an image and not a real event.