The Grammars of Close Apposition

Abstract

This paper addresses the notion of close apposition. It begins by analyzing the quintessential appositive construction the poet Burns, arguing that such strings do not have a stable internal structure. This conclusion can be applied to other so-called close appositions, such as we boys, but not to similar-looking structures like my friend Burns or a friend John in linguistics. Most close appositions are characterized by a strong degree of conventionalization and fixity, and remain relatively fossilized schemas, a fact that contributes to their recognizability as specific constructions. However, not all these seemingly binominal constructions have exactly the same constituency, but are rather relatively distinct symbols with distinct functions. The focus of this paper is thus to show how so-called close appositions do not constitute a fixed form. It will also be suggested—although due to space limitations not fully pursued—that both their similarities and the “taxonomic” and “inheritance” ties they share motivate an analysis of close apposition in general as a constructional “network,” understood in a way which is compatible with various forms of Construction Grammar.

Typologizing nominal expressions: the noun phrase and beyond

“…( 23) English (Germanic) Oh I remember I was talking to this bloke Mark some sort of this really old friend of mine. (Keizer 2005: 461) Overall, these constructions seem to occupy a relatively small functional niche in English (see also Acuña-Fariña 2016). In comparison, it has been argued that close apposition in Australian languages seems to be more broadly used, involving more semantic types like generic-specific structures, as illustrated in ( 24), and partwhole structures (Sadler and Nordlinger 2010).…”

From People's King to King of a Country: The Development of the Place Element Modifying the Title Paired in Apposition with a Personal Name Traced in the Peterborough Chronicle

“…In fact, the presence or absence of comma intonation is crucial for analysing appositive constructions in Present‐Day English. Heringa (2011), for example, considers loose appositions, which are separated by comma intonation, as appositions proper, while Acuña‐Fariña (2016) focuses on close appositions without such intonational separation. Based mainly on their intuitive judgements, Meyer (1992), the first comprehensive study of apposition, views apposition as a gradable grammatical relation with various syntactic, semantic and pragmatic realisations, and Huddleston & Pullum (2002), the most authoritative grammar of the English language, analyse the paired title and name as a combination of a name and its appellation/embellishment (a pre‐head modifier categorising the named individual), a head and its dependent (a post‐head modifier specifying or identifying the head noun), and an anchor and its supplement (an intonationally separate element that is semantically, not syntactically, related to the anchor on which it gives additional information) for syntactic consistency.…”