In my “coming” node I added “(-ing ending can never be inf)”. But -ing endings can mean participle. I had forgotten that I have already figured out that participles can not only act as adjectives, but also as adverbs:
I don’t think “screaming” is modifying “she” in that example. What about:
Screaming, she ran out of the room.
Still seems like “screaming” is modifying “ran” rather than “she.”
You disagree with Peikoff then:
So “Coming into the room” is a participial phrase, functioning in this case as an adjective modifying “Jack.”
I’m not sure what to think myself (then I wrote the stuff below and I now lean towards Peikoff being mistaken.) I think the “darting up the wall” example gives more sense the way Peikoff thinks of it, but it might be that he thinks that participles can’t act as adverbs, that they can’t modify verbs.
If we take:
Darting up the wall, the mouse escaped.
We could rewrite it as:
The mouse darting up the wall escaped.
That sounds natural. “Darting” would clearly modify “mouse.” But rewriting:
Coming into the room, Jack began to remove his coat.
To:
Jack coming into the room began to remove his coat.
Doesn’t sound as good. In that case I want commas around “coming into the room.” In which case it seems to give context for the whole clause and action, like you said.