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During the interview he promoted a new book, his brutally honest and funny memoir.

So this is a noun phrase in apposition, but is that what defines it as a noun phrase in this example (being in apposition)?

I would have thought 'a brutally honest and funny memoir' would be a noun phrase, as there is no subject.

He just stood there, his face clearly revealing his disappointment.

This is an absolute phrase, but has a subject like the first example but contains a non-finite structure.

So other than that and their difference in usage here, they are similar: his memoir/his face.

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  • I think you mean ‘Apposition’ (not ‘Opposition’). I have edited accordingly. The phrase in italic is a participial noun phrase.
    – Tuffy
    Commented Jan 30, 2019 at 2:39
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    Sorry: I hit the send button by mistake. In Latin it would be described as ‘in apposition’ [which only really means ‘put next to’, but in a sense that allows apposition to indicate a semantic or syntactic proximity]. To what it is in apposition is uncertain, I think. This could be the noun ‘he’ - it enlarges on (tells us more about HIM); it could be to the verb (tells us more about what he was DOING); or it might be to the entire clause. I am not familiar with how this grammatical is treated by modern grammarians. But I am think it is in apposition to the clause as a whole.
    – Tuffy
    Commented Jan 30, 2019 at 2:54
  • Isn't this a lot like your previous question: Difference between supplemental NP and absolute clause?
    – herisson
    Commented Jan 30, 2019 at 4:53

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During the interview he promoted a new book, his brutally honest and funny memoir.

What makes the italicized portion a noun phrase is not its function (e.g., being in apposition) but the fact that the head of the phrase (memoir) is classified as a noun.

He just stood there, his face clearly revealing his disappointment.

Here, the italicized portion is not a noun phrase, because its head is not a noun (e.g., face or disappointment) but the verb revealing. Since it has his face as its subject, you can call it a non-finite clause.

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  • Participle noun phrase: the dog whining for a treat (head whining) her dog whining for a treat (absolute) same head word whining, so is it not the subject or lack of which defines it as an absolute not just the verb or function of the phrase.
    – bluebell1
    Commented Feb 16, 2019 at 18:12
  • @bluebell1 You need to give me a full sentence, but the very concept of 'participle noun phrase' is outdated because it's illogical. If the head of a phrase is a participle, it's a verb phrase, not a noun phrase, because 'participle' is a verb.
    – JK2
    Commented Feb 17, 2019 at 1:25

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