Is "I heard the bough broken off by its own weight" correct in grammar?

Question

Sometimes, as I sat at my window, so heedlessly did they (boughs) grow and tax their weak joints, I heard a fresh and tender bough suddenly fall like a fan to the ground, when there was not a breath of air stirring, broken off by its own weight.

1. I assumed that the complete sentence containing 'broken off by its own weight' is 'I heard a fresh and tender bough broken off by its own weight', and the 'when' phrase is a parenthesis.

   But it seems like that the verb after a verb of perception should be in the simple form or -ing form, Can I use past tense verbs here? Or did I misunderstand the sentence?

2. I figure 'stirring' is used to describe 'a breath of air', can a gerund be used like this? Thank you very much.

Answer 1

In some cases, verbs can behave like adjectives. I believe the term for them is 'attributive verbs'. The sentence might be a bit clearer to you if I rearrange it:

I heard a fresh and tender bough, having been broken off by its own weight suddenly fall like a fan to the ground, when there was not a breath of air stirring.

Another, more simple example might be:

The person talking is my friend.

In this case, 'talking' describes the friend, and therefore behaves like an adjective.

The term 'broken off by its own weight' acts as a description for the bough. This usage is perfectly grammatically correct, and you did not misunderstand the sentence.

To answer your second question about stirring: it is not a gerund, it is the past continuous. Stirring means agitating, or disturbing, it simple means that there was no wind disturbing the branch (so it didn’t fall because of the wind)

Answer 2

broken off by its own weight

"Broken" is a participle introducing a phrase modifying "bough."

Part of the problem here is that, in order to be understood easily, such adjectival phrases need to be close to the noun that is intended to be modified. In my youth, I would have been told that this was a "misplaced modifier" and told to rewrite so as to place the modifier closer to the noun modified. Every Monday, we would be given sentences from papers and asked to identify any errors and correct them without changing the apparent meaning. In other words, we were taught how to self-edit and to rewrite. But today the stress is on expressing yourself even if what is expressed is incomprehensible gibberish.

So enough of regretting the sorry state of education. If we try to fix just the most blatant infelicities in the mess that you were subjected to, we might get

I heard a fresh and tender bough, broken off by its own weight, suddenly fall like a fan to the ground even though not a breath of air was stirring

It is till a very clunky sentence, particularly because, as you alluded to, the verb of perception makes little sense. No one hears a bough falling. One can see a bough falling. One can also hear the crack of a bough breaking or the crash of a bough landing. One might even hear the rustling of the leaves of a falling bough. But the implication of a falling fan is silence: something that may be visible but not audible.

Even the word "bough" is ill chosen. A bough is sizable. It does not float like a fan quietly to earth. Nor is a bough fresh and tender. What is meant is "shoot" or "sprig," and I greatly doubt that you can actually hear a new shoot drop from a tree.

I sympathize. It must be hard to learn English from texts written by those whose own English is pitiable.