22. Appositives and Punctuation. English Grammar, Language

Yossarian explains what an appositive is, and then shows that non-restrictive appositives must be set off with commas.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• sandor
• grammer
• grammarian
• comma
• restrictive
• nominal
• phrase

[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]

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.

[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]

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]

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