22. Appositives and Punctuation. English Grammar, Language

[pivotgeek21]

You're the man. You are just simply the man.

[utubemaxe]

Dear Mrthoth,

You are simply one of the best..

Thank you so much

Maxy

[TheLarssan]

Thanks. :)

[whiteeagleflies]

SGEL by Greenbaum and Quirk in 17.27 says "Appositives need NOT be noun phrases; compare: He angered, nay infuriated, his audience." Following the Quirkian taxonomy, the relationship of the two verbs in the sentence can be classified as an apposition. Both verbs are experiencer-stimulus verbs with the same experiencer and the same stimulus. The intensity of the experience is what is redefined, renamed, and further explained; but here, not with a noun. (I am not a grammarian; I am a physicist.)

[mrthoth]

Thanks for the comment. We traditional grammarians use "apposition" to refer to nouns and nominal phrases that refer to the exact same thing. That's the definition you'll find in dictionaries, and so that's the definition I use. Someday the linguists you refer may get the majority to adopt their definitions, but it hasn't happened yet, so to avoid confusion I use the definitions that are in general use right now, rather than definitions that might someday become widespread.

[whiteeagleflies]

Thanks for your comments. I accept your argument and it is not that I have no authority to reject it that I accept it. ;-) I hope you do not feel I was grilling you. Far it be from me to do so.

[whiteeagleflies]

Gabor? Yet another Hungarian name. :)To me, "bigger, that is, heavier" is more than just parallelism. Two phrases are in apposition when they're parallel plus they are logically equivalent, ie., they have the same truth value in every model (bigger --> heavier; heavier --> bigger). Logical equality for bigger and heavier generally holds true for us, humans, does it not?

Apposition is a way of explaining a word or phrase, or giving additional information about it. Terminology.

[mrthoth]

Thank you for your comment. Here is definition of "apposition" offered by Merriam-Webster's online dictionary: "a grammatical construction in which two usually adjacent nouns having the same referent stand in the same syntactical relation to the rest of a sentence." By defintion, only nouns can be appositives.

[whiteeagleflies]

Look at this sentence, please: He is BIGGER than me, HEAVIER, that is. If you ask me, here we can also see an example of apposition; namely, apposition of adjectives (not juxtaposed). SECONDLY and LASTLY, we can appose adverbial elements with a formal expression of their relationship (coordinating conjunction) as you can see in this sentence. What is your say in this matter? Thanks for your attention and thanks for your wonderful videos. The one I like most is about the objective complements.

[mrthoth]

Thank you for your comment. By definition, appositives are nouns that refer to the same thing . The examples you give are of adjectives and adverbs that are parallel--i.e. they fill the same grammatical "slot" in the sentence. In "My friend Gabor," "my friend" = "Gabor." They are in apposition. But "bigger" doesn't equal "heavier," and "secondly" doesn't equal "lastly," so it's good to have a special name for the special parallelism of nouns that we call apposition.

[whiteeagleflies]

Hello mrthoth,

You like that name, Sandor, don't you? As far as I know, this is a given name and is used solely by Hungarians. Are you Hungarian? Back to business: About the appositives, you said they can be realized by NP's, right? See my next post (there is a limit on characters and I had to splitmy message).

[NeoJobe]

The best part is that you are aware of how other people are feeling who are not aware of what you are speaking about. At the beginning of episode 21 you realized that when you started speaking about Restrictive and Non-Restrictive that people were getting scared off and you calmed us down and asked us to keep following. Then you explained it and it was wonderful.

Seriously, thank you.

[MadamePukengkay]

Mr. Thoth, you are a very handsome middle-aged man. You are very ripe for picking. What should I do to go to bed with you, huh?

[xXxREPUBLICELITExXxX]

yaaa now im going to get an a on my quiz tommarow

[ghofer]

This was really helpful thank you.

[007606259ful]

Suppose that I was to say, "Lebron is the number one player in the world", would "the number one player" be the appositive?

[mrthoth]

"The number one player" would NOT be an appositive in that sentence; it would be a subjective complement (I have a video on subjective complements). It WOULD be an appositive in this sentence: "Lebron, the number one player in the world, is my friend." Notice that there is NOTHING at all, not even the verb "is," between "Lebron" and "the number one player in the world" when the phrase functions as an appositive.

[whiteeagleflies]

Surely not. Their relationship is one of subject-subject complement.

[tdog661]

does everything have to do with sandor or sandora?

[chaospoet]

I'm going to have to watch this one about twenty more times. It seemed to me an easy way to remember is if there's only one of something then it's restrictive, if there's more than one then it's non-restrictive, but that last sentense just blew that idea out of the water so now I'm completely lost.

[daeckoman1]

Really helpful thanks

[SaVaIGe]

Are You A Teacher Because your really helpfull

[KingLuisong]

My friend Nadia is also my student.

[KingLuisong]

Nadia my friend is also my student.

[KingLuisong]

Angelo, the magician, is very skilled.

[mrthoth]

Right. The sentence as you have punctuated it means that there are many Lords, one of whom is great and the rest of whom are not. You need to put commas around "who is great" if you want to say there is but one Lord.

[sw1e6hq]

Further to my mnemonic in lecture No. 20 I can add to it here:

So, if it does "nothing" for the sentence it is "non"-restrictive and the hyphen in non-restrictive ties up with both the hyphen in 'in-play' and the hyphen in 'should be set-off with commas'.

[chrislyndd]

Dear Yossarian, Thank you so much for your wonderful explanations of English grammar. I'd greatly appreciate it if you could comment on the following question: You are showing a picture of your friend to someone. Woul you say, "This is she and her father on vacation last year" OR would you say "This is (implicitly meaning this ia a picture of) her and her father on vacation last year" ? Thanks in advance for your help.

[blueskyyng]

Your lessons are very useful, short and straight to the point. They answer many questions that I had thought about, but never did clarify.

It would be nice if you could recommend a text to go along with your lessons. Thanks you so much for the lessons.

[blueskyyng]

Sorry for the typo in the last sentence.

[firebreathone]

restrictives are identifying and non restrictives commenting. That always works for remembering this! great work btw.

[ababoubi]

firebreathone, would you please explain the word 'btw'? Thanks. A.

[firebreathone]

abbreviation of by the way