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Apposition is a grammatical construction in which two elements, normally 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, the phrase, "John, my best friend" uses the scheme known as apposition. Tropes (from Greek trepein, 'to turn') change the general meaning of words. An example of a trope is irony, which is the use of words to convey the opposite of their usual meaning ("For Brutus is an honorable man; / So are they all, all honorable men").
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?
In honor of MLK Day, read the most famous Martin Luther King Jr. quotes. With his words, he inspires us all to pursue justice, love, freedom and equality.
The phrase a great singer, set off by commas, is both an appositive and a parenthesis. A dog (not a cat) is an animal that barks. The phrase not a cat is a parenthesis. My umbrella (which is somewhat broken) can still shield the two of us from the rain. The phrase which is somewhat broken is a parenthesis. Please, Gerald, come here!
When a word, phrase, image, or idea is repeated throughout a work or several works of literature. For example, in Ray Bradbury's short story, "There Will Come Soft Rains", he describes a futuristic "smart house" in a post-nuclear-war time. All life is dead except for one dog, which dies in the course of the story.
A proverbial phrase or expression is a type of conventional saying similar to a proverb and transmitted by oral tradition. The difference is that a proverb is a fixed expression, while a proverbial phrase permits alterations to fit the grammar of the context. [1] [2] In 1768, John Ray defined a proverbial phrase as:
Phrase structure rules as they are commonly employed result in a view of sentence structure that is constituency-based. Thus, grammars that employ phrase structure rules are constituency grammars (= phrase structure grammars), as opposed to dependency grammars, [4] which view sentence structure as dependency-based. What this means is that for ...