Timeline for In the phrase "the letter L" or "the number 3", which is the noun and which is the adjunct?
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| May 21 at 23:09 | comment | added | LPH | @onigame This is one of the consequences of the necessity for the noun phrases to have identical referents, and it is a detail that should have its place in a thourough treatment. Plain logic will require a plural for both phrases in cases such as those you mention; not using the same number in those cases would result in nonsense, obviously. However, in certain cases, collective nouns can cooccur with plural noun phrases, there is no problem. ("The students, a sixth form class, had been asked to participate in the experiment.") | |
| May 21 at 20:15 | comment | added | onigame | So, how would that affect plurals? "The neighbors, the Bricks, are on the telephone." "The Campbells, the lawyers, were here last night." Does that mean it's "letters Ls"? "I drew two letters, Ls, from the Scrabble tile bag". | |
| May 21 at 18:47 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | According to that refinement, yes. But one can argue that 'Anna, my best friend' ... is equally explanatory. | |
| May 21 at 13:04 | comment | added | LPH | @EdwinAshworth it is an evaluative comment synonymous with 'the wicked man', and is an exclamatory aside." Wouldn't you then dismiss the examples of parentheticals you give as evaluations, explanatory asides ("that is, a yellowish colour", "whipped with a particular sort of whip called a scourge")? (2/2) | |
| May 21 at 13:02 | comment | added | LPH | @EdwinAshworth Here is an interesting precision found in CoGEL that shows two possible interpretations of parentheses, of which one is not of the nature of apposition; according to that, parenthetical explanation would not fit the category of apposition. CoGEL: "The difference between the two constructions is highlighted in the ambiguity of [4] ex.: Richard (the villain) forced his sister into marriage. [4] - In one interpretation, the villain is intended as a critical term, 'the bad character in the play', and is appositive to Richard; in the other interpretation, (1/2) | |
| May 21 at 10:12 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | So one could include: adjectives: He was slightly sallow (yellowish) [explanatory] // verbs: He was scourged (whipped) [again, explanatory] // prepositional phrases: To all life Thou givest, to both great and small; [expanding the concept: adding detailed analysis] | |
| May 21 at 10:11 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | I'll give an even broader definition of 'appositive'[noun] ... a pair or occasionally a series of usually adjacent words, phrases, or clauses (especially nouns or noun equivalents) that have the same referent and that stand in the same syntactical relation to the rest of the sentence (such as the poet and Burns in "a biography of the poet Burns"): a pair or series of words, phrases, or clauses standing in grammatical apposition' [Merriam-Webster].... | |
| May 20 at 19:14 | history | edited | LPH | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 20 at 19:02 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | Good to see the balanced treatment afforded to what 'apposition' is seen as. We'll probably get a precising definition claiming to be gospel soon. | |
| May 20 at 16:34 | comment | added | LPH | @JohnBollinger That's the main consequence of the answer, yes. | |
| May 20 at 14:26 | comment | added | John Bollinger | So the answer to the question posed is "both are nouns; neither is an adjunct"? | |
| May 20 at 11:57 | comment | added | LPH | @IlmariKaronen Those were unfortunately skipped in the process of rewriting the drag and drop text, which can be quite bad at times. Thanks for telling me! | |
| May 20 at 11:46 | history | edited | LPH | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 20 at 10:58 | comment | added | Ilmari Karonen | It's quite nice to learn that "appositives can be separ;~tely olnittetl" [sic]. I'm sure Mr Cnmpbcll the lawyer also appreciates that. ;) | |
| May 20 at 0:08 | history | answered | LPH | CC BY-SA 4.0 |