I read this sentence in a book:
Being jealous, Mona would not let her boyfriend dance with any of the
cheerleaders.
I've seen similiar sentences starting with "being" but I don't know why an english person should start a sentence like that! If I was going to say the same things, maybe i would say this one:
Mona didn't let her boyfriend dance with any of the cheerleaders
because she was jealous.
Now these are my questions:
- When do English people start a sentence with "being"?
- What's the difference between my sentence and the first sentence?
- Is my sentence right at all?
Best Answer
Being jealous is what's called a free adjunct. It would be very difficult to explain exactly what linguists understand about it to you, since it requires a lot of technical knowledge.
The best way to explain it is this. Let's start with the sentence:
At this point, the listeners doesn't know why Mona didn't let her boyfriend dance with any of the cheerleaders. However, the speaker wants to let the listener know why Mona didn't let him, so they want to add that Mona was jealous.
The most straight-forward solution would be your sentence,
The reverse also works (Because...Mona...). But they require two clauses inside the main sentence.
Instead of having to put two clauses inside the main sentence, why not just have one with some extra information tacked on?
This is analogous to:
The difference is that with jealously, it moved from the main clause to outside it. In other words, the original sentence was:
And then the jealously moved in a process we call topicalization. Topicalization in English moves parts of the sentence to the front so they're more prominent.
With being jealous, however, it didn't move from anywhere. The speaker just thought of it and attached it to a point where it's allowed, which includes the front of the sentence.
In conclusion, being jealous is basically a quick way of saying "Mona was jealous, therefore...." with fewer words.