Thursday, March 26, 2015

punctuation - Shouldn't the comma be omitted? And is this sentence consistent in the tense?


Original sentence:




Prince Andrew, looking again at that genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a man laughs who looks at a portrait so characteristic of the original as to be amusing.



(War and Peace, Tolstoy, English translation)


In the sentence above, shouldn't the comma before laughing be omitted if this is about the participle clause denoting "an action that happens at the same time in the past"? I mean it should be



Prince Andrew…shook his head laughing as a man…



Plus, shouldn't the verb laugh after a man be in the past tense in order to be in accordance (agreement) with shook his head?


You know, the whole sentence should be consistent….




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