Verb BE

Question

"What's wrong?" her voice (why no "was" here ?) just restraining with annoyance.  I know this may not be the best example, but I just want to know why verb BE is eliminated here, and under what other situations, I can eliminate BE.  Please kindly give me a few examples.thanksS.

Mr Wordy · Accepted Answer

Your sentence doesn't read properly to me. Do you have in mind something like the following?

"'What's wrong?' she said, her voice trembling with fear."

(I just made up "trembling with fear" at random. Any of countless other variations are possible.)

If this isn't what you mean then ignore the rest of this post!

"her voice trembling with fear" is a clause that gives further information about a subject ("she") that's already been mentioned. The thing to note is that "'What's wrong?' she said" is a valid sentence by itself. That's what makes it possible (mandatory in fact) to omit "was" in the second part. You can't say "What's wrong?" her voice trembling with fear" -- for one thing, there's no main verb.

Examples of similar structures:

"She looked around the room, her eyes darting from side to side."

"The car struggled up the hill, its engine coughing and wheezing."

Note again that the parts before the comma are valid sentences by themselves. The parts after the comma don't work as standalone sentences. For example, you can't say "Her eyes darting from side to side". To make a complete sentence, you need "Her eyes were darting from side to side" (or, of course, "Her eyes darted from side to side").

Sarah88 · Answer

Very clear now, Thank you so much.

Verb BE

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