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I have the following sentence

I believe you, someone called trustworthy, is not lying.

Should it be 'is not lying' or 'are not lying'?

Basically, do you conjugate the verb based off the appositive or what it's explaining?

Also does whether the appositive precedes or follows what it's explaining affect the conjugation?
Example:

A collection of plants, the rainforest is green.

Should it be 'is green' or 'are green'?

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    You got yourself an ambiguous sentence that is off as it is. "I believe you, someone called trustworthy is not lying" means trustworthy Pat is not lying. "I believe you, someone called trustworthy, are not lying" means that you are called trusty and would not lie.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented Oct 12, 2021 at 20:41
  • The "rainforest" example depends on singular vs plural, which isn't so clear-cut. "A collection" would seem on the surface to be singular, but it's not always so simple. But, to adapt the 1st example: "A trustworthy person, you are not lying."
    – Andy Bonner
    Commented Oct 12, 2021 at 20:57
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    Both sentences are more than awkward and neither provides a reasonable example. The appositive is offset by commas and is basically adjectival to the main subject: it does not affect the verb. "The forests, the pride of our nation, are burning." -> "The pride of our nation, the forests, is burning."
    – Greybeard
    Commented Oct 12, 2021 at 23:04
  • A supplementary (non-defining) appositive has no bearing on the form of the verb, so the 2 sg form "are" is correct. Re your second question, an appositive never precedes but always follows the NP it modifies or is supplement to. Your example is best written as "The rainforest, a collection of plants is green", but note that "a collection of plants" is not an appositive but simply an ascriptive NP.
    – BillJ
    Commented Oct 13, 2021 at 7:52
  • @YosefBaskin Your first example is missing the second comma, which makes "someone called trustworthy" a parenthetical, not the subject of a clause.
    – Barmar
    Commented Oct 13, 2021 at 17:00

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