Apposition

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the grammatical construction. For other uses, see Apposition (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with dislocations, an apposition-like structure whose elements are not placed side by side.
Not to be confused with adposition.

Apposition is a

noun phrases
, are placed side by side so one element identifies the other in a different way. The two elements are said to be in apposition, and one of the elements is called the appositive, but its identification requires consideration of how the elements are used in a sentence.

For example, in these sentences, the phrases Alice Smith and my sister are in apposition, with the appositive identified with italics:

  • My sister, Alice Smith, likes jelly beans.
  • Alice Smith, my sister, likes jelly beans.

Traditionally, appositions were called by their Latin name appositio, derived from the Latin ad ("near") and positio ("placement"), although the English form is now more commonly used.

Apposition is a figure of speech of the

scheme type and often results when the verbs (particularly verbs of being) in supporting clauses are eliminated to produce shorter descriptive phrases. That makes them often function as hyperbatons
, or figures of disorder, because they can disrupt the flow of a sentence. For example, in the phrase: "My wife, a surgeon by training,...", it is necessary to pause before the parenthetical modification "a surgeon by training".

Restrictive versus non-restrictive

A restrictive appositive provides information essential to identifying the phrase in apposition. It limits or clarifies that phrase in some crucial way, such that the meaning of the sentence would change if the appositive were removed. In English, restrictive appositives are not set off by

commas
. The sentences below use restrictive appositives. Here and elsewhere in this section, the relevant phrases are marked as the appositive phraseA or the phrase in appositionP.

  • My friendP Alice SmithA likes jelly beans. – I have many friends, but I am restricting my statement to the one named Alice Smith.
  • He likes the television showP The SimpsonsA. – There are many television shows, and he likes that particular one.

A non-restrictive appositive provides information not critical to identifying the phrase in apposition. It provides non-essential information, and the essential meaning of the sentence would not change if the appositive were removed. In English, non-restrictive appositives are typically set off by commas.[1] The sentences below use non-restrictive appositives.

  • Alice SmithP, my friendA, likes jelly beans. – The fact that Alice is my friend is not necessary to identify her.
  • I visited CanadaP, a beautiful countryA. – The appositive (that it is beautiful) is not needed to identify Canada.
  • The first to arrive at the houseA, sheP unlocked the front door.

The same phrase can be a restrictive appositive in one context and a non-restrictive appositive in another:

  • My brotherP NathanA is here. – Restrictive: I have several brothers, and the one named Nathan is here.
  • My brotherP, NathanA, is here. – Non-restrictive: I have only one brother and, as an aside, his name is Nathan.

If there is any doubt that the appositive is non-restrictive, it is safer to use the restrictive punctuation.[citation needed] In the example above, the restrictive first sentence is still correct even if there is only one brother.

A relative clause is not always an appositive.

  • My sisterP, Alice SmithA, likes jelly beans. – The appositive is the noun phrase Alice Smith.
  • My sisterP, a doctor whose name is Alice SmithA, likes jelly beans. – The appositive is the noun phrase with dependent relative clause a doctor whose name is Alice Smith.
  • My sister, whose name is Alice Smith, likes jelly beans. – There is no appositive. There is a relative clause: whose name is Alice Smith.

More examples:

Zero article
:

  • The English writer Agatha Christie, author of nearly a hundred mystery novels and stories, was born in 1891.

Examples

In the following examples, the appositive phrases are shown in italics:

A false title is a kind of restrictive appositive, as in "Noted biologist Jane Smith has arrived". Here the phrase noted biologist appears without an article as if it were a title. The grammatical correctness of false titles is controversial.

Appositive phrases can also serve as definitions:

  • No one – not a single person – should ever suffer that way. – Emphatic semantic duplication.

Appositive genitive

In several languages, the same syntax that is used to express such relations as possession can also be used appositively:

  • In English:
    • "Appositive oblique", a prepositional phrase with of as in: the month of December, the sin of pride, or the city of New York. That has also been invoked as an explanation for the double genitive: a friend of mine.[2]
    • The ending -'s as in
      In Dublin's Fair City
      , which is uncommon.
  • In Classical Greek:
    • "Genitive of explanation" as in Greek: ὑὸς μέγα χρῆμα, romanized: hyòs méga chrêma, "a monster (great affair) of a boar" (Histories of Herodotus, 1.36), where ὑὸς, the word for boar is inflected for the genitive singular[3]
  • In Japanese:
  • In Biblical Hebrew:

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Commas: Some Common Problems"[permanent dead link], Princeton Writing Program, Princeton University, 1999, princeton.edu/writing/center/resources/.
  2. ISBN 0-521-43146-8
  3. ^ §1322 (pages 317–318), Herbert Weir Smyth, revised by Gordon M. Messing, Greek Grammar, Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 1956 Perseus Digital Library
  4. ^ "Noun-related Particles | Learn Japanese". www.guidetojapanese.org. Retrieved 2016-05-10.
  5. ISBN 4-7890-0454-6
    .
  6. ISBN 0-931464-31-5

References

External links

Look up apposition in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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