23
votes
Accepted
"Dobby the house-elf's former owners"
It’s a “restrictive appositive,” which are subject to some important differences with respect to how you punctuate them. The reading you suggest would instead be the case if you had a non-restrictive ...
- 4,954
7
votes
Accepted
Articles before profession names: "Ms. Smith, public health nurse, was born..."
Yes, we usually use the indefinite article when we describe someone's occupation in a construction with be:
He is a doctor.
But when we name a unique role or task, we either use the or omit the ...
- 36.5k
4
votes
Present participle or relative clause: "writing this thing" in "You did too good of a job writing this thing"
This is a really gnarly question! I have two nominees:
a gerund clause in apposition to the direct object a good job ... This understands writing this thing as fundamentally a restatement or ...
- 175k
4
votes
Accepted
Can you tell me about the comma in appositives?
Upset by the bad call, the crowd cheered the man, a hot-tempered tennis player, who charged the umpire and tried to crack the poor man's skull with a racket.
You're using the comma correctly to set ...
- 36.7k
4
votes
What's the grammar of "What was it you said?"?
What was it you said?
It's tricky!
This is an it-cleft construction where the foregrounded element is questioned. "It" is the subject of the matrix be clause, with the relative clause appearing in ...
- 15.8k
4
votes
"Dobby the house-elf's former owners"
It looks like you're dividing the sentence slightly incorrectly. Segmented correctly, it looks something like this:
Dobby the house-elf
's former owners:
Lucius Malfoy;
his son, Draco;
and ...
- 293
3
votes
Accepted
Can "The month of December" be seen as an appositive structure?
As is the case with most prepositions, "of" does not have a single meaning or use.
The use you quite accurately describe as appositive actually consists of having a general noun (in your examples, "...
- 4,126
3
votes
What's the grammar of "What was it you said?"?
Technically, "a noun clause" can't refer to "a pronoun". So, we can't say that there is a bridge between the pronoun "it" and "you said".
I think that there is an omitted "that" there.
What was ...
- 874
3
votes
What's the grammar of "What was it you said?"?
Compare:
That is all the money he has.
he has is a restrictive clause defining the money.
That is all the money he has in the world. [his "net worth"]
That is all the money he has with ...
- 121k
3
votes
Accepted
Does it matter which way I order appositives?
The example uses a company that readers would probably know is the biggest, so I would put the subordinate clause last.
A person sued BigCorp, the biggest company on Earth.
Suppose it is a not a ...
- 16.2k
3
votes
Accepted
How to understand: "felony aggravated indecent assault" in this context?
They don't describe the exact same thing, that is the assault, and they don;t necessarily need to be collocated.
aggravated indecent assault
describes the crime, and
felony
describes the ...
- 66.1k
3
votes
"Dobby the house-elf's former owners"
A more compact version of KRyan's answer: distinguishing between "(Dobby the house-elf)'s former master" and "Dobby (the house-elf's former master)" is generally done by putting a comma between "Dobby"...
- 5,895
3
votes
How to use apposition
Whether 3a is grammatical is dubious; it certainly is not idiomatic. 3 is grammatical and idiomatic.
It is hard to explain why 3a is not good English. I believe the most obvious explanation relates ...
- 31.9k
3
votes
Accepted
Can an appositive noun not follow the noun in apposition to it?
Actually, appositions typically only occur after the nouns they refer to:
In ancient times, Confucius, a great Chinese leader, was born.
In your sentence, which is a paraphrased version of the one ...
- 4,126
3
votes
Accepted
Usage with appositives and titles
In A), commas must not be used around "Hermione Granger" because the identification is more specific than the descriptive appositive phrase that precedes it. That means her name is essential ...
- 41.6k
3
votes
What is an appositive and how should it be punctuated?
You have asked two questions, which isn't strictly allowed here. However, I'm going to reframe your question because I don't think all of your examples are actually examples of apposition and I think ...
- 96k
2
votes
Acceptability of the two sentences.?
Let me try and help you with these sentences. Try these sentences :
He did not inherit anything from his parents.
and
Sally believes that he committed suicide yesterday. (He is someone else, ...
- 8,248
2
votes
Accepted
Is "Poor them, who hate chocolates" grammatical?
Poor him.
Poor them.
Lucky you.
All are standalone sentence, and are used for the purpose of exclamation. They are grammatical and correct. The structure is like this
Adjective + Object form of ...
- 10.8k
2
votes
Accepted
Use or non-use of the definite article before a proper noun in an appositive phrase
This is analogous to the question about (the) Minkowski spaces of the other day.
I don't know anything about the drugs mentioned, but I assume from its alphanumeric designation that ABC-12 is ...
- 121k
2
votes
Can you tell me about the comma in appositives?
In more general terms what you seem to be asking is whether a 'supplemental' or 'parenthetical' phrase—in this case an appositive—can be placed between a nominal and its following adjunct&...
- 175k
2
votes
Accepted
Article usage in a noun clause: "Tim Courtney, (a?) (the?) chief investment officer of Exencial Wealth Advisors, said.."
Both are correct.
"Tim Courtney, chief investment officer of ... " sounds more authoritative, since we don't know whether he's the only chief investment officer, or one of the two chief investment ...
- 3,116
2
votes
What's the grammar rule for "article before appositive noun"?
In the, likely newpaper headline,
"Mr. Bob Timms, leader of the Democratic Party, MP for Threeoaks, has announced his resignation.
the definite article is missing.
It could read:
Mr. Bob ...
- 2,748
2
votes
What's the grammar rule for "article before appositive noun"?
As others have pointed out, it's idiomatic to leave out the article even if the sentence is not a newspaper headline. However, as a matter of style this works well as a list of three or more elements,...
- 88.1k
2
votes
What's the grammar of "What was it you said?"?
The "missing relativiser" is What was it that you said?. For most contexts this would be exactly equivalent to What did you say? - but in this specific "rhetorical question" context the longer version ...
2
votes
Position of appositive
demanding both flexibility and quick response to its challanges
No: this is not a noun phrase, but a gerund-participial clause serving as an adjunct, so it cannot be an appositive.
Appositives are ...
- 15.8k
2
votes
Is this expression right?
I have had to check the definition of apposition.
According to the Wikipedia
Apposition is a grammatical construction in which two elements,
normally noun phrases, are placed side by side, with ...
- 6,835
2
votes
Accepted
I want to know when to able to grammatically omit "that" leading an appositive clause
As user178049 says in a comment, "that this would be the last time" is functioning as the complement of "feeling" (just as it could function as the object of the verb "feel") and "that" is optional in ...
- 73.7k
2
votes
a Northern Inuit dog, which is a breed with a wolf-like appearance
Do all Northern Inuit dogs look like wolves? or Are all dogs that look like wolves Northern Inuit dogs?
That should help you decide the order of the clauses. The clause that follows "which"...
- 202k
2
votes
Appositive phrase usage
He, John, will leave tomorrow.
I, Deep, am learning English.
We, the winners, are very proud.
It, the disease, is not yet fully understood. [more spoken but possible]
Short answer
Yes, a pronoun can ...
- 41.1k
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