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I came across this sentence when reading a newspaper.

  • An information systems specialist who set up his own mobile app development company, Edward established Web Organic in 2019 and tapped contacts in the industry for help.

In this sentence, "an information systems specialist who set up his own mobile app development company" is placed at the beginning (in front of the subject)

In what conditions can an appositive phrase be placed forward? For instance, are the sentences below grammatically correct? (They both sound weird to me but I couldn't figure out their difference with the aforementioned sentence)

  • 1 The president of the United States, Trump waged a trade war against China.

  • 2 A fan of Michael Jordan, Jack flew to the US to watch his match.

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  • You need to insert a comma after the appositive modifier."The president of the United States, Trump, waged a trade war against China"./ "A fan of Michael Jordan, Jack, flew to the US to watch his match.
    – BillJ
    Commented May 28, 2020 at 5:58
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    << A lifelong fan of Accrington City, Stan Busby was happy to see Accy promoted >> has a descriptive (non-defining, though quite possibly giving a reason) fronted phrase that some would say is in apposition to 'Stan Busby'. Adding 'as' or 'being' before the initial phrase confirms the reason / explanation association. // << A lifelong fan of Accrington City, Stan Busby, was happy to see Accy promoted >> unarguably shows (particularising) apposition. Note the ambiguity (reason or merely added information?) in the first case; one may wish to avoid this.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Sep 27, 2020 at 15:24

2 Answers 2

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It's an appositive, and as such, can appear before or after the noun.

Purdue Writing Lab:

An appositive phrase usually follows the word it explains or identifies, but it may also precede it.

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  • No, an appositive is always a post-head modifier. If the order is reversed, the second NP becomes the appositive.
    – BillJ
    Commented May 28, 2020 at 5:41
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    ... That's probably a more sensible definition, but it's not the only one in use by grammarians.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Sep 27, 2020 at 15:14
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As BillJ and Tinfoilhat have pointed out, these examples are not appositives. CaGEL defines apposition as the construction with a specifying NP supplement where the appositive NP could be substituted for the whole supplementation yielding an entailment of the original(CaGEL p1357):

The first contestant, Lulu, was ushered onto stage.

Lulu was ushered onto stage.

Other examples given are:

The murderer, the man with the scar, will be arrested soon.

A university lecturer, Dr Brown, was arrested for the crime.

A surprise present, a bouquet of roses, was delivered to my door.

An entire genre, the comedy thriller, has been made obsolete by the invention of the mobile phone.

A Sevfert galaxv - a galaxy with a brilliant nucleus -usually has a massive red-shift.

The examples given are instead ascriptive NP supplements, CaGEL explains that these constructions do not qualify as apposition because the supplement cannot always be substituted for the whole construction in such a way as to yield an entailment of the original (CaGEL p1358).

An information systems specialist who set up his own mobile app development company established Web Organic in 2019 and tapped contacts in the industry for help.

The president of the United States waged a trade war against China.

A fan of Michael Jordan flew to the US to watch his match.

The above do not give the same interpretation as the originals unless we have some further information - who established Web Organic, which time period in history is under discussion, which fan of Michael Jordan's.

In some cases, it could even be argued that the ascriptive supplement has the whole clauses as its anchor, not just the NP, as it provides some explanation for the situation described in the clause.

A die-hard conservative, her father refused to even consider the proposal.

A fan of Michael Jordan, Jack flew to the US to watch his match.

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  • Yes, but appositives are always post-head modifiers, so if the order is reversed the head and modifier are also reversed, and that may not be possible.
    – BillJ
    Commented May 28, 2020 at 5:55
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    The OP's example is not an appositive; you can neither add a comma after Edward nor remove the one before Edward.
    – Tinfoil Hat
    Commented May 29, 2020 at 17:13

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