XXXII. NOUNS: THE APPOSITIVE
124. It is frequently necessary to explain some term we use, and there is a convenient way for doing this without making a new sentence. For instance, an author writes, “One of these buildings belongs to the Horse Guards.” Then, for fear we may not know who the Horse Guards are, he adds these explanatory words, “a very fine body of English cavalry.”
This group of words consists of the noun body used as a base word, modified by the prepositional phrase of English cavalry, the adjective element very fine, and the article a. The whole group is placed beside the term it explains, and is separated from it by a comma. Such a group of words is called an appositive, and the base word body is called a noun in apposition.
125. Sometimes we explain who a person is by using his name; as, “I heard your friend, John Richards, say that he was going to write to you.”
Sometimes the name of a person or animal or place is used first, and then explained by a group of words; as, “Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, lay out at full length on his rock.”
126. The appositive and the term it explains are in reality two names for the same person or thing. You might think that either one could be called the appositive, but this is not so. It is the explanatory term that is the appositive, and this is the second of the two terms.
127. Sometimes, when there is no danger of any misunderstanding, the appositive comes at a little distance from the word it modifies; as, “Splendid buildings meet our eyes at every turn,—churches, private residences, places of business, and public edifices.” Can you account for this arrangement?
128. Sometimes an appositive has been used so long with the word it modifies that the two have become united into one name; as, Peter the Hermit, Peter the Great, William the Conqueror. Such an appositive is not set off by a comma.
Note.—In the term Peter the Great, the adjective great has become a noun, and is modified by the adjective the.
129. When ownership is to be denoted, the sign of possession is added to the appositive instead of to the term that it explains; as, “The poet Milton’s daughter,” “Mr. Taft, the president’s, cow,” “My friend Julia’s husband.”
Summary.—An appositive is a word or a group of words placed after a term to explain it.
When the base word of an appositive is a noun, it is called a noun in apposition.
The case of a noun in apposition is the same as that of the noun it explains.
An appositive is a modifier of a noun or a pronoun.
An appositive is set off from the rest of the sentence by commas unless it makes one term with the word it modifies.
Exercise.—Select all the appositives in the following sentences, and tell what they modify. Find the nouns in apposition. Tell the case of each, giving the reason in each instance. Analyze sentences 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16.
1. Alfred the Great loved books and strangers and travelers.
2. In the neatest, sandiest hole of all lived Benjamin’s aunt and his cousins,—Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter.
3. The conversation turned to rheumatism, a subject of very remote interest to Polly.
4. My son William became a telegraph operator before he was seventeen.
5. James II, the bigoted successor of Charles I, had annulled the charters of all the colonies.
6. The geography lesson that day was the rivers of Asia,—the Obi, Yenisei, Lena, Amoor, Hoang Ho, and Yang-tse-kiang.
7. Some writers tell us that Edward the Confessor had made a will appointing Duke William his successor.
8. Foremost among the envious ones was the Princess Panka, the daughter of a neighboring king.
9. Close to Charing Cross is Trafalgar Square, a fine open space with a fountain, and a column to Lord Nelson.
10. The body of Warwick the kingmaker was exposed for three days on the pavement of St. Paul’s, and then deposited among the ashes of his fathers in the abbey of Bilsam.
11. The pass was crowned with dense, dark forest,—deodar, walnut, wild cherry, wild olive, and wild pear.
12. Kaa, the big Rock Python, had changed his skin for perhaps the two hundredth time since his birth.
13. Eric the Red, a wandering Norseman who was dwelling in Iceland, went to sea and discovered Greenland.
14. There are so many things to distract a boy’s attention,—a chipmunk in the fence, a bird on a near tree, and a henhawk circling high in the air over the barnyard.
15. Very soundly it slept, that doomed hare crouching under the fir bush!
16. They had never been accounted for, Rebecca’s eyes.