An appositive is a noun or noun phrase that renames the noun immediately before it. In the sentence “Carol, my boss, has just been called for a meeting,” “my boss” is a renaming of “Carol.”
What is an application?
An adverb is a noun or noun phrase that renames or modifies another noun or noun phrase that precedes it. These two nouns (modifier and noun or noun phrase) refer to the same thing but name it in different ways. Let’s use a student named Sara to illustrate, where “Sara” is a (proper) noun and “a student” is the appropriate renaming for her:
Sara, a student, raised her hand.
If we rewrite the sentence in two sentences, both the base noun (“Sara”) and the complement (“a student”) can function independently as the subject of the sentence:
Sarah raised her hand.
One student raised his hand.
When to use or not use commas with a definite:
In the example above, appositive is used to give you more information about the noun that precedes it. The noun phrase “a student” tells you something about who Sara is. This is an unrestricted affix, because “Sara” alone is specific enough to let the reader know who we mean and the affix can be omitted without confusion. Unrestricted applications should be enclosed in commas.
Consider another unrestricted appositive, where Fiona has only one sister and that sister’s name is Abby.
“Fiona’s sister, Abby, drives her to work.”
In this case, we again put a comma in parentheses (“Abby”) because we know that “Fiona’s sister” can refer to only one person. In “Fiona’s sister drives her to work”, there is no mistaking who “Fiona’s older sister” refers to. Adding “Abby” to a sentence is just adding a bit of information.
But what if Fiona’s friend drove her to work? Fiona has many friends, and Cat kindly brought her in today.
“Fiona’s friend Cat drives her to work.”
An appositive that helps identify which of the many things or people is being named is called a restrictive appositive because it restricts—or limits—who or what the first noun refers to. In this sentence, the word “Cat” is required to avoid confusion if you want to know which of Fiona’s many friends drove her to work. When using a restrictive appositive, do not enclose it in commas.
Here’s another limited appositive example: Dr. Jones is going to a university, where she will be joining several other guest lecturers.
“Guest instructor Dr. Jones will be arriving shortly.”
“Doctor. Jones” is an aptly named “guest lecturer.” If Dr. Jones is among the guest lecturers, naming her will remove any confusion about who is coming shortly. In this case “Guest instructor will be coming soon” is not enough information to tell us which lecturers will be arriving shortly, and so again we do not enclose this parenthesis (“Dr. Jones”) with commas.
A real-world Appositive:
However, pronouns can (and often are) much longer and more complex than simple nouns or noun phrases. Thomas Mallon illustrates this perfectly, writing about a 29-word critique he found in his obituary at New York Times:
To succeed in this genre, the writer must highlight the defining, key phrase between the first two commas that tells you who the corpse is and what he did. Thomas could have noted this syntax longer than Placido Domingo: “Benjamin Eisenstadt, the creative Brooklyn entrepreneur who got Americans to shake their sugar before sweetening their coffee and then rocked the entire industry. sweetener as developer of Sweet’n Low, died at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.” — Thomas Mallon, GQ, November 1997
Categories: Usage Notes
Source: vothisaucamau.edu.vn
