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I read the sentence "We’ve had a couple of incidents of people coming in very distressed, people who thought they’d never need a food bank." from the Guardian news.

There are two questions:

  1. Is the second "people" appositive? Could it be changed to "We’ve had a couple of incidents of people who thought they’d never need a food bank coming in very distressed"?
  2. Who are "very distressed", we or the people?

Thanks.

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    The speaker reports that two groups of people had come in in a distressed state, then explains that the distress was because they were the kind of people who had never expected to need a food bank. Your version doesn't include this nuance.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Mar 9, 2023 at 9:01
  • But what does "people" behind the comma mean? Which sentence constituent it is, appositive?
    – Mr. Wang
    Commented Mar 9, 2023 at 14:10
  • "People who [had] thought they [would] never need a food bank" is a clause giving further explanation of the kind of people mentioned in the first part of the sentence.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Mar 9, 2023 at 16:32

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Is the second "people" appositive?

Yes, I would consider it an appositive. It is possible that the comma replaces the conjunction "and", but I think that that is unlikely in this case. (A series of only two items usually uses "and" to connect the items instead of a comma.)

Could it be changed to "We’ve had a couple of incidents of people who thought they’d never need a food bank coming in very distressed"?

Yes, they have the same meaning. It seems to me that the people coming in very distressed are exactly the same people who thought they’d never need a food bank (assuming that the comma doesn't mean "and", of course). (I disagree on this point with some people who have written otherwise on this page.)

Who are "very distressed", we or the people?

The adjectival phrase "very distressed" is far from "we", with several other words between them. Furthermore, it seems to make much more sense that the people coming in would be distressed rather than the speaker's group (presumably a group that operates a food bank). I therefore think that it's safe to say that it modifies "people".

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  • But shouldn't "very distressed" be an adverb? Why it can be used to describe people? What kind of usage it is?
    – Mr. Wang
    Commented Mar 10, 2023 at 3:08
  • @appleapple The phrase "very distressed" is headed by the second word, which many dictionaries define as an adjective but could also be considered a past participle. Both adjectives and past participles are more likely to function adjectivally than adverbially.
    – MarcInManhattan
    Commented Mar 10, 2023 at 3:20
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    Thanks a lot.Suddenly enlightened!
    – Mr. Wang
    Commented Mar 10, 2023 at 3:36
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The people are very distressed.

I think this is most easily understood as a parallel structure

The speaker is saying, with the parallelism removed:

We’ve had a couple of incidents of people coming in very distressed. We’ve had a couple of incidents of people who thought they’d never need a food bank.

The repetition of the phrase "We’ve had a couple of incidents of" is unnecessary. The two sentences can be reduced to a single one with two parallel objects of the preposition "of". It makes sense to repeat "people" to make it clear what noun the relative clause "who..." is modifying. There is an additional implication that the "very distressed people" are also the people who never thought they'd need a food bank.

Your rephrasing doesn't quite capture that. The original suggests that there are some people who were both very distressed and "never thought..." Your rephasing says that among those who "never thought..." there were some who were very distressed (and some who were not very distressed).

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  • Parallel structure makes me suddenly enlightened. Thanks a lot. And there is another question what kind of usage "very distressed" is. Shouldn't it be an adverb?
    – Mr. Wang
    Commented Mar 10, 2023 at 2:05
  • It is an adjective and a complement. It describes the people, not the manner in which they came in.
    – James K
    Commented Mar 10, 2023 at 6:07

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