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Suggest you see Merlin Donald, Origins of the Modern Mind, Harvard University Press, 1991, for a discussion of appositional thinking. 68.3.35.239 ( talk) 13:43, 15 August 2010 (UTC) Paul Bendheim, August 15, 2010
Someone did a really great job with the NPOV here. It is silent on whether or not this device should be used. It would be nice to have several schools of thought on this included. Is the apposition more commonly used in older, modern, or more formal writing? Have certain great writers used or avoided it? If you have some information on this but don't think it merits inclusion, I would still be interested. (leave a message on my talk page) thanks, -- Victoria h 23:45, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
The problem is that both are different by their very nature. Merging the two would create more confusion because an appositive is a noun phrase and has nothing to do with Apposition which deals with titles and/or names only. Grammatically the two can be similar, but in cases where one uses both, it can be a nightmare when placing commas. The only way apposition should only be shown with appositives is as a warning such as "sometimes confused with." To most people, this is not a big deal, but it is grammatically important. David, a fan...
Someone did a really great job with the NPOV here. It is silent on whether or not this device should be used. It would be nice to have several schools of thought on this included. Is the apposition more commonly used in older, modern, or more formal writing? Have certain great writers used or avoided it? If you have some information on this but don't think it merits inclusion, I would still be interested. (leave a message on my talk page) thanks, -- Victoria h 23:46, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Is the year of a date an appositive? There are thousands of July 19s, but only one July 19, 2002.
The following is the entire content of Talk:Appositive:
This page contains discussions about the " appositive" article.
The former witty examples illustrating Appositive built into an outstanding Wikipedia entry were not humorless and "encyclopedic" enough to satisfy User:Burschik, who suppressed the whole and substituted the current leaden and pedestrian effort, with its "Dick and Jane" numbered examples. The former entry, in its entirety, read:
In grammar, an appositive, a useful dependent noun or phrase or full clause such as this one, offers clarification or additional explanation in a condensed format. An appositive follows the word it explains, offset by commas. One 'way to identify an appositive is to ask the question: could this phrase replace the word next to it? Does this phrase make the word next to it all but unnecessary?
In this Wikipedia entry, the use of appositives and appositive phrases, grammatical devices so handy that their overuse is tempting, are identified by italics.
An appositive, grammatically incomplete, is always set off by commas, a reader-friendly invention, with one exception: LAPIDARY INSCRIPTIONS CHISELLED INTO STONE. If you do not have a chisel in your hand, you must set off an appositive with commas, though at the beginning or end of the sentence only one comma is required.
As for commas, ancient Romans scarcely knew the period at the end of a sentence.
Not all phrases set off by commas are appositives. Some appositives are so brief— and sometimes so inevitable— that they are epithets: Alexander the Great, the Macedonian conqueror of Persia, comes to mind. But Charlemagne, "Charles the Great", has absorbed his epithet into his very name, much like his 9th-century contemporary Haroun al-Rashid, the caliph at Baghdad. Arabic personal names, daunting to the Anglophone eye,* if such metaphors may be mixed, combine a series of patronymics with an epithet or two, set "in apposition," a phrase not to confuse with "opposition.".
* a gerund phrase placed in apposition
_____
I don't think the chiseling conceit was relevant or appropriate. Just say "An appositive must be set off by commas." The chiseling thing isn't a grammatical exception, so forget about it.
I hope you laughed. Nevertheless, it's all true. Wetman 18:54, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Such a clever article, with its effective tutorial style, should be a model for others.
I admit the article was clever. However, it was not what is generally* considered encyclopedic. Burschik 08:55, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
*By "generally" read "by resentful humorless small-town high-school graduates insurance salesmen like me"
" 4. Bill brought Alice along to the famous singer's wedding. Bill's friend, Alice, adored the famous singer, Dean Martin.
"... The appositives in example four are non-restrictive, since Bill's friend and the famous singer have already been identified."
The famous singer has not been previously identified, so the appositive "Dean Martin" is still restrictive. — Unsigned
Why do we have this page and Apposition?
68.166.38.31 07:11, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
the article states this is possible. Does anyone have an example? 66.41.59.162 02:50, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
"This makes them often function hyperbatons," Should this be "function as"?? -Jeff
I had an issue with one of the perspectives of the paper. I'd like to get a few opinions on this, as I'm neither a grammarian nor a linguist.
What are your opinions? - grubber 03:48, 21 January 2007 (UTC) (revised 06:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC))
Excellent explanation. I appreciate it. I looked up what I could and could not find the distinction. Now, we should incorporate your points into the article, as I feel the talk page is more helpful than the article! :) - grubber 02:43, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Most sources are careful to say two elements, pointing out that they are often noun phrases, but need not be. Ralph M. Albaugh in his A Dictionary of Grammar and Structure gives the following non-noun-phrase examples:
O'RyanW ( ☺ ₪) 02:09, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I think that the current third and forth paragraphs
Apposition often results when the verbs (particularly verbs of being) in supporting clauses are eliminated to produce shorter descriptive phrases. This makes them often function hyperbatons, or figures of disorder because they can disrupt the flow of a sentence. For example in the phrase: "My wife, a nurse by training,...," it is necessary to pause before the parenthetical modification "a nurse by training."
While apposition is quite common in modern prose, it has been pointed out [2] that it is rarely used in impromptu speech, which tends to make greater use of parenthesis or subordinate clauses. In ordinary speech, the preceding example would more likely be rendered: "my wife, who is a nurse by training,...."
should be moved down and form a new section named something like "Usage" or "Rhetorical uses". I would place it between the current "Examples" and "References". O'RyanW ( ☺ ₪) 06:04, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
In addition to Quirk (1985) two books which anyone wishing to expand this article in depth should study, in my view, are:
Meyer's work is corpus based. He analyzes the gradation in syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties from coordination through apposition to subordination that various constructions display. He also charts the differing degrees to which various genres (conversation, the press, fiction, scientific, other academic) and subgenres tend to use different types of "apposition" and speculates on the pragmatic reasons for these differences.
Acuña reviews the literature on apposition focusing on Poutsma, Jespersen, Curme, Hockett, Chomsky, Sopher, Burton-Roberts, Bitea, Koktová, and Meyer. He strictly applies criteria for judging whether a construction is appositive. In the end only non-restrictive juxtaposed definite noun phrases, and perhaps certain adverbial constructions are left. He doubts that there is sufficient motivation for considering apposition to be a relation distinct from both coordination and modification. The non-restrictive structues are sometimes indeterminate, having a dual analysis.
I have just finished a 62K article on apposition for the Esperanto Wikipedia and will be very interested to see what develops here. O'RyanW ( ☺ ₪) 23:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
As a linguist, I am quite surprised to hear about 'restrictive appositives'. AFAIK, the distinction between restrictives and non-restrictives applies to RELATIVE clauses, with appositives intersecting with the latter class.
For example: The man which is standing there is cool. (restrictive relative clause) Mary, who is standing there, is pretty. (non-restrictive relative clause) Mary, a trained nurse, is pretty (apposition).
IMHO the whole restrictive vs non-restrictive section should be deleted since the distinction does not apply here. Concerning punctuation, appositions must be separated by commas or dashes anyway. Sebiroth 10:17, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Would it be appropriate to include something about the "appositive genitive"? The use of the same construction which indicates possession (the gentive case, a prepositional or postpositional clause, the construct) is used in many languages to indicate apposition: Dublin's fair city, the habit of smoking, a monstrosity of a blunder, ...
TomS TDotO ( talk) 16:39, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
The article seems to use the two words interchangeably. If they are synonyms, the first part of the article needs to read "Apposition, also know as appositives...). If, however, as this talk page suggests, they are different concepts, both need to be defined explicitly, since the former redirects to the latter. Either way, there needs to be consistency in the article. Switching words midarticle is not a good idea. — trlkly 14:47, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Well I,( Rosevictor ( talk) 19:13, 14 December 2008 (UTC)), ask this question is appositive new or additional info set by commas or is my English teacher is wrong If so get me a reason and why or why not. Posted By ( Rosevictor ( talk) 19:13, 14 December 2008 (UTC)).
You need a definition for the wordYou —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.193.130.250 ( talk) 23:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
09-November-2011: Someone has tagged the term " non-restrictive apositive" to request additional text for "[clarification needed]" and so to clarify, I am rewriting the text to mention the concept as to "restrict, or limit, the scope". - Wikid77 05:23, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
For now i am taking the view that that usage is not an example of apposition (but rather an ungrammatical lyric, invented to fit a convenient poetic meter). In fact, i now remember that the apparently analogous "My brother, he says that ..." was a usage explicitly treated as bad speech in, probably, my public grade school in a suburb of a big northeast-coast city. (Or, if not, in the
jr. high of the pop. 8k
seat of a county in which about another 3k now live in even smaller "cities", 2k in incorporated villages, and 36k(!) elsewhere, and presumably farm and/or run small businesses directly serving farmers, or the farm families that (i assume) raise big families).
--
Jerzy•
t 08:15, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||
|
Suggest you see Merlin Donald, Origins of the Modern Mind, Harvard University Press, 1991, for a discussion of appositional thinking. 68.3.35.239 ( talk) 13:43, 15 August 2010 (UTC) Paul Bendheim, August 15, 2010
Someone did a really great job with the NPOV here. It is silent on whether or not this device should be used. It would be nice to have several schools of thought on this included. Is the apposition more commonly used in older, modern, or more formal writing? Have certain great writers used or avoided it? If you have some information on this but don't think it merits inclusion, I would still be interested. (leave a message on my talk page) thanks, -- Victoria h 23:45, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
The problem is that both are different by their very nature. Merging the two would create more confusion because an appositive is a noun phrase and has nothing to do with Apposition which deals with titles and/or names only. Grammatically the two can be similar, but in cases where one uses both, it can be a nightmare when placing commas. The only way apposition should only be shown with appositives is as a warning such as "sometimes confused with." To most people, this is not a big deal, but it is grammatically important. David, a fan...
Someone did a really great job with the NPOV here. It is silent on whether or not this device should be used. It would be nice to have several schools of thought on this included. Is the apposition more commonly used in older, modern, or more formal writing? Have certain great writers used or avoided it? If you have some information on this but don't think it merits inclusion, I would still be interested. (leave a message on my talk page) thanks, -- Victoria h 23:46, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Is the year of a date an appositive? There are thousands of July 19s, but only one July 19, 2002.
The following is the entire content of Talk:Appositive:
This page contains discussions about the " appositive" article.
The former witty examples illustrating Appositive built into an outstanding Wikipedia entry were not humorless and "encyclopedic" enough to satisfy User:Burschik, who suppressed the whole and substituted the current leaden and pedestrian effort, with its "Dick and Jane" numbered examples. The former entry, in its entirety, read:
In grammar, an appositive, a useful dependent noun or phrase or full clause such as this one, offers clarification or additional explanation in a condensed format. An appositive follows the word it explains, offset by commas. One 'way to identify an appositive is to ask the question: could this phrase replace the word next to it? Does this phrase make the word next to it all but unnecessary?
In this Wikipedia entry, the use of appositives and appositive phrases, grammatical devices so handy that their overuse is tempting, are identified by italics.
An appositive, grammatically incomplete, is always set off by commas, a reader-friendly invention, with one exception: LAPIDARY INSCRIPTIONS CHISELLED INTO STONE. If you do not have a chisel in your hand, you must set off an appositive with commas, though at the beginning or end of the sentence only one comma is required.
As for commas, ancient Romans scarcely knew the period at the end of a sentence.
Not all phrases set off by commas are appositives. Some appositives are so brief— and sometimes so inevitable— that they are epithets: Alexander the Great, the Macedonian conqueror of Persia, comes to mind. But Charlemagne, "Charles the Great", has absorbed his epithet into his very name, much like his 9th-century contemporary Haroun al-Rashid, the caliph at Baghdad. Arabic personal names, daunting to the Anglophone eye,* if such metaphors may be mixed, combine a series of patronymics with an epithet or two, set "in apposition," a phrase not to confuse with "opposition.".
* a gerund phrase placed in apposition
_____
I don't think the chiseling conceit was relevant or appropriate. Just say "An appositive must be set off by commas." The chiseling thing isn't a grammatical exception, so forget about it.
I hope you laughed. Nevertheless, it's all true. Wetman 18:54, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Such a clever article, with its effective tutorial style, should be a model for others.
I admit the article was clever. However, it was not what is generally* considered encyclopedic. Burschik 08:55, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
*By "generally" read "by resentful humorless small-town high-school graduates insurance salesmen like me"
" 4. Bill brought Alice along to the famous singer's wedding. Bill's friend, Alice, adored the famous singer, Dean Martin.
"... The appositives in example four are non-restrictive, since Bill's friend and the famous singer have already been identified."
The famous singer has not been previously identified, so the appositive "Dean Martin" is still restrictive. — Unsigned
Why do we have this page and Apposition?
68.166.38.31 07:11, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
the article states this is possible. Does anyone have an example? 66.41.59.162 02:50, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
"This makes them often function hyperbatons," Should this be "function as"?? -Jeff
I had an issue with one of the perspectives of the paper. I'd like to get a few opinions on this, as I'm neither a grammarian nor a linguist.
What are your opinions? - grubber 03:48, 21 January 2007 (UTC) (revised 06:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC))
Excellent explanation. I appreciate it. I looked up what I could and could not find the distinction. Now, we should incorporate your points into the article, as I feel the talk page is more helpful than the article! :) - grubber 02:43, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Most sources are careful to say two elements, pointing out that they are often noun phrases, but need not be. Ralph M. Albaugh in his A Dictionary of Grammar and Structure gives the following non-noun-phrase examples:
O'RyanW ( ☺ ₪) 02:09, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I think that the current third and forth paragraphs
Apposition often results when the verbs (particularly verbs of being) in supporting clauses are eliminated to produce shorter descriptive phrases. This makes them often function hyperbatons, or figures of disorder because they can disrupt the flow of a sentence. For example in the phrase: "My wife, a nurse by training,...," it is necessary to pause before the parenthetical modification "a nurse by training."
While apposition is quite common in modern prose, it has been pointed out [2] that it is rarely used in impromptu speech, which tends to make greater use of parenthesis or subordinate clauses. In ordinary speech, the preceding example would more likely be rendered: "my wife, who is a nurse by training,...."
should be moved down and form a new section named something like "Usage" or "Rhetorical uses". I would place it between the current "Examples" and "References". O'RyanW ( ☺ ₪) 06:04, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
In addition to Quirk (1985) two books which anyone wishing to expand this article in depth should study, in my view, are:
Meyer's work is corpus based. He analyzes the gradation in syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties from coordination through apposition to subordination that various constructions display. He also charts the differing degrees to which various genres (conversation, the press, fiction, scientific, other academic) and subgenres tend to use different types of "apposition" and speculates on the pragmatic reasons for these differences.
Acuña reviews the literature on apposition focusing on Poutsma, Jespersen, Curme, Hockett, Chomsky, Sopher, Burton-Roberts, Bitea, Koktová, and Meyer. He strictly applies criteria for judging whether a construction is appositive. In the end only non-restrictive juxtaposed definite noun phrases, and perhaps certain adverbial constructions are left. He doubts that there is sufficient motivation for considering apposition to be a relation distinct from both coordination and modification. The non-restrictive structues are sometimes indeterminate, having a dual analysis.
I have just finished a 62K article on apposition for the Esperanto Wikipedia and will be very interested to see what develops here. O'RyanW ( ☺ ₪) 23:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
As a linguist, I am quite surprised to hear about 'restrictive appositives'. AFAIK, the distinction between restrictives and non-restrictives applies to RELATIVE clauses, with appositives intersecting with the latter class.
For example: The man which is standing there is cool. (restrictive relative clause) Mary, who is standing there, is pretty. (non-restrictive relative clause) Mary, a trained nurse, is pretty (apposition).
IMHO the whole restrictive vs non-restrictive section should be deleted since the distinction does not apply here. Concerning punctuation, appositions must be separated by commas or dashes anyway. Sebiroth 10:17, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Would it be appropriate to include something about the "appositive genitive"? The use of the same construction which indicates possession (the gentive case, a prepositional or postpositional clause, the construct) is used in many languages to indicate apposition: Dublin's fair city, the habit of smoking, a monstrosity of a blunder, ...
TomS TDotO ( talk) 16:39, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
The article seems to use the two words interchangeably. If they are synonyms, the first part of the article needs to read "Apposition, also know as appositives...). If, however, as this talk page suggests, they are different concepts, both need to be defined explicitly, since the former redirects to the latter. Either way, there needs to be consistency in the article. Switching words midarticle is not a good idea. — trlkly 14:47, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Well I,( Rosevictor ( talk) 19:13, 14 December 2008 (UTC)), ask this question is appositive new or additional info set by commas or is my English teacher is wrong If so get me a reason and why or why not. Posted By ( Rosevictor ( talk) 19:13, 14 December 2008 (UTC)).
You need a definition for the wordYou —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.193.130.250 ( talk) 23:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
09-November-2011: Someone has tagged the term " non-restrictive apositive" to request additional text for "[clarification needed]" and so to clarify, I am rewriting the text to mention the concept as to "restrict, or limit, the scope". - Wikid77 05:23, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
For now i am taking the view that that usage is not an example of apposition (but rather an ungrammatical lyric, invented to fit a convenient poetic meter). In fact, i now remember that the apparently analogous "My brother, he says that ..." was a usage explicitly treated as bad speech in, probably, my public grade school in a suburb of a big northeast-coast city. (Or, if not, in the
jr. high of the pop. 8k
seat of a county in which about another 3k now live in even smaller "cities", 2k in incorporated villages, and 36k(!) elsewhere, and presumably farm and/or run small businesses directly serving farmers, or the farm families that (i assume) raise big families).
--
Jerzy•
t 08:15, 3 October 2016 (UTC)