Teacher Discussion Forums

Here's a sentence from Azar's blue book:

The sight of a butterfly floating from flower to flower on a warm sunny day brightens anyone's heart.

It's from an exercise on coordinating conjunctions.

I have a student who wants to punctuate it as follows:

The sight of a butterfly, floating from flower to flower on a warm sunny day, brightens anyone's heart.

He sees it as a relative clause - non essential information.

I can see his point. I also feel that the whole subject (the sight of a butterfly floating from flower to flower on a woarm sunny day) could stand alone without punctuation. However, I can't come up with a grammatically based argument supporting myself. And of course, I could be completely wrong.

Anyone out there have any arguments supporting either point of view? A huge thank you in advance.

PS - I don't have the teacher's book

Seems like the floating is an essential part of this delightful scene; therefore, I like the commas.

Commas can be used to set of non-essential information, as in

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the US, served during the civil war.

I suppose there may be a context for this sentence in which the floating is non-essential, or extra, information. But it seems more likely to me that it's necessary to getting the main point across.

Better to teach grammar with a context of some sort, and then such questions are more easily resolved.

For grammar practice with listening, with a clear context, by the way, please visit English Zoom!!! www.englishzoom.com It's free!

[quote='Azar"]The sight of a butterfly floating from flower to flower on a warm sunny day brightens anyone's heart.[/quote]

Try,

It's not the butterfly per se that brightens one's heart; it's the butterfly's floating from flower to flower on a warn sunny day that brighten's one's heart.

Compare,

It's the sight of a butterfly sitting on a branch on a warm sunny day that brightens one's heart.