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A restrictive appositive provides information essential to identifying the phrase in apposition. It limits or clarifies that phrase in some crucial way, such that the meaning of the sentence would change if the appositive were removed. In English, restrictive appositives are not set off by commas. The sentences below use restrictive appositives.
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?
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").
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!
A false, coined, fake, bogus or pseudo-title, also called a Time-style adjective and an anarthrous nominal premodifier, is a kind of preposed appositive phrase before a noun predominantly found in journalistic writing. It formally resembles a title, in that it does not start with an article, but is a common noun phrase, not a title.
Sometimes a noun with a postpositive modifier comes to form a set phrase, similar in some ways to the set phrases with postpositive adjectives referred to above (in that, for example, the plural ending will normally attach to the noun, rather than at the end of the phrase). Some such phrases include:
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.
Phrase structure rules break sentences down into their constituent parts. These constituents are often represented as tree structures (dendrograms). The tree for Chomsky's sentence can be rendered as follows: A constituent is any word or combination of words that is dominated by a single node. Thus each individual word is a constituent.