Question on free adjuncts ② (academic grammar) [closed]

Question

I am writing a short novel. If I continue these sentences, which could be chosen grammatically?

• Drinking a bottle of orange juice, the boys were choked. (=While they drank)
  ① In fact, they were poor, so they were sharing the single bottle.
  ② They were drinking separate bottles of juice. But funnily enough, they all were choked at the same time.
  ③ both of ① and ②

• Drinking a bottle of orange juice, the boys left the restaurant. (=They drank... and then)
  ① In fact, they were poor, so they shared the single bottle.
  ② They were drinking separate bottles of juice. But the orange juice was too expensive for the poor boys. In their purses, there was no money remaining.
  ③ both of ① and ②

Answer 1

As usual with multiple possession, the literal meaning is that there is one bottle, that they were all drinking from.

If you intended multiple bottles you would either need to say "Drinking bottles of orange juice", or "Drinking a bottle of orange juice each".

But multiple possession is normally understood in context, and we would try to understand rather than just follow the literal meaning.

In either case, this present participle construction is not very natural. The ambiguity in this construction can easily be avoided and native speakers would naturally avoid this kind of sentence, because it can be hard to understand.

As they were sharing a bottle of orange juice, all the boys started to choke.

The boys were drinking orange juice as they left the restaurant.

A good skill to have when writing is to find a clear way to express something, and not worry about how an unclear way will be understood (because the unclear way is probably not good writing)