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Take this sentence, where John is clarifying himself.

I John do hereby declare that I am hungry.

  • I is the subject.
  • What is John?

John takes the place of an intensive reflexive pronoun, if the sentence read...

I myself do hereby declare that I am hungry.

But John is not a pronoun. It is a proper noun at that.

So, is this an intensive proper noun? Is John then an Intensive Subject? What do we call "John" in this pattern?

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    Works like any appositive. I, the speaker, sayeth thus. You, Baby, are the best.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented May 29, 2022 at 16:41
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    It's a noun phrase, all right. This construction is called an Appositive noun phrase. Both the subject NP and the appositive NP refer to the same thing (or person, as here).
    – John Lawler
    Commented May 29, 2022 at 16:41
  • Does this answer your question? Grammar analysis: [We] [two brothers] are responsible for this act. [We] [both] are responsible for this act Also Must Appositives be in the Same Person?
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented May 29, 2022 at 17:54
  • @FumbleFingers Please look at least at the first comment before recommending dups. The answer to that proposed dup is a "determinative". The answer to my question is "appositive". "Determinative" comments help to clarify, is useful, but it does not provide an answer.
    – Jesse
    Commented May 29, 2022 at 17:59
  • This post is about "uncle Jack", which could also be considered a title, such as "Mr. Kipling", baring punctuation. My question couldn't possibly have that confusion.
    – Jesse
    Commented May 29, 2022 at 18:21

1 Answer 1

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Restrictive Appositive

This is called apposition:

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

eg:

My friend Alice Smith likes jelly beans.

  • Alice Smith: appositive phrase
  • My friend: phrase in apposition

Note the difference between restrictive and non-restrictive:

restrictive: (provides essential information)

I John do hereby declare that I am hungry.

non-restrictive: (parenthetical via commas, additional information)

I, John, do hereby declare that I am hungry.

Related and insightful, but not the same: Grammar analysis: [We] [two brothers] are responsible for this act. [We] [both] are responsible for this act

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  • 'I[,] John' cannot be a restrictive appositive since 'I' is totally identifying by itself. The comma in this case is added because 'I John' sounds unnatural in speech. // 'My friend John' is restrictive [/identifying, defining] since the particular friend is being identified. 'My friend, John' is adding additional information but not intended as an identifying device.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented May 29, 2022 at 18:21
  • I find Bradd Szonye's answer concise and satisfactory (apart from not stressing the usual identification of non-defining appositives [and relatives] by adding the conventional commas). If you want to delve deeper, into whether the appositive can precede the 'other' NP/DP, or if there are 'non-synonymous appositives', you'll have to look elsewhere.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented May 29, 2022 at 18:58
  • I John... — without the commas — would not be acceptable in formal written English.
    – Tinfoil Hat
    Commented May 29, 2022 at 19:02
  • Grammatically, appositives are always post-head modifiers . In your example, "My friend Alice Smith", "friend" is the head and the NP "Alice Smith" is the post-head modifier. There are no exceptions.
    – BillJ
    Commented May 29, 2022 at 19:04
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    Hey, Jesse: Our expert mod -- @tchrist -- does (or use to do) the H1 all the time: e.g. english.stackexchange.com/questions/579292/… . But I have found myself having to compromise my HTML semantics in favor of the expected and accepted visual styles here.
    – Tinfoil Hat
    Commented Jun 1, 2022 at 2:09

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