| 词组 | appositives |
| 释义 | appositives Since Copperud 1970, 1980, Janis 1984, and Safire (N. Y. Times Mag., 16 Feb. 1986) (along with many handbooks) are at some pains to distinguish restrictive and nonrestrictive appositives for purposes of punctuation and they connect the distinction with somewhat dubious inferences about meaning, it may be helpful if we say something here about the behavior of appositives. These comments are based on Quirk et al. 1985, wherein the subject is dealt with in considerable detail and with admirable clarity. An appositive is defined in school grammar books as • ... a noun or pronoun—often with modifiers—set beside another noun or pronoun to explain or identify it —Warriner's English Grammar and Composition, Complete Course, 1986 Quirk distinguishes three sets of characteristics of appositives. First, there is full and partial apposition. In full apposition, either of the nouns can be omitted from the sentence, and what remains will still be an acceptable English sentence. In the resultant sentence, each noun will have the same grammatical function, such as the subject or direct object. In addition, the sentences made by omitting one or other of the nouns will have the same meaning in the real world—"in extralinguis-tic reference," to use Quirk's term. Thus, in this sentence A cousin of mine, Leonard Davis, has been elected to Congress. we can omit either noun A cousin of mine has been elected to Congress. Leonard Davis has been elected to Congress. and still have acceptable English sentences with the remaining noun as subject. And the nouns are coreferential—they both stand for Leonard Davis, the new congressman, in the extralinguistic world. Appositives that do not meet all three criteria are said to be in partial apposition. Quirk next notes strict and weak apposition. In strict apposition the appositives belong to the same syntactic class: • Journalism, her choice of a career, has brought her great happiness. In the example sentence, both journalism and her choice of a career fall into the class of noun phrases. In weak apposition, they are from different syntactic classes: • Her choice of a career, reporting the news, has brought her great happiness. Here we have a noun phrase in apposition with a gerund phrase (or "-ing-clause" in Quirk's terminology); they are members of different syntactic classes. Then Quirk discusses restrictive and nonrestrictive apposition. In nonrestrictive apposition (our examples so far are all nonrestrictive) the appositives are in different units of information which in speech are signaled by different stress and intonation and often a pause, and in writing are signaled by punctuation—usually commas. The two nonrestrictive appositive units contribute relatively independent information, with the first unit usually acting as the defined expression and the second as the defining expression. Because the appositives are distinctly separate units, the defining and defined roles can be switched by merely reversing their order: • Sally Williams, the coach of the visiting team, predicted victory. The coach of the visiting team, Sally Williams, predicted victory. In restrictive apposition the two units are not separated in speech or by punctuation in writing: • I wish I could shimmy like my sister Kate. Of course, these characteristics can be combined in various ways. Here, for instance, we have partial, strict, nonrestrictive apposition: • Mr. Holohan, assistant secretary of the Eire Abu Society, had been walking up and down Dublin for nearly a month —James Joyce, Dubliners, 1914 Quirk has many more examples and much more detail. One thing Quirk does not mention is the rule-of-thumb inference that Copperud, Safire, and Janis expound upon about the number of items in the class to which the appositives refer based on the restrictive or nonrestrictive status of the appositives. Their theory is that a nonrestrictive appositive signals but a single one of the items in the extralinguistic world, while a restrictive appositive means that one out of a group of more than one in the extralinguistic world is being identified. Thus, "His wife, Helen, attended the ceremony" would mean but one wife, and "He sent his daughter Cicely to college" would suggest more than one daughter. The inference will be valid in most cases but can be untrustworthy if drawn too casually. From "Springfield, a city in Massachusetts, ..." no reasonable inference about the number of Springfields is possible, though the appositive is plainly nonrestrictive. The particular Springfield has either been identified in earlier context or isolated in the writer's mind. And then we have this nonrestrictive example: • He sent the older daughter, Kathleen, to a good convent —James Joyce, Dubliners, 1914 Older signals two daughters, in spite of the nonrestrictive appositive. If it is argued that there is but one older daughter, we will concede that to be most likely. Still, we have no trouble in conceiving of a context where two older daughters are being contrasted with a younger one, and in that context the appositive in Joyce's sentence would suddenly become restrictive and need to lose its commas. Quirk says only that "restrictiveness ... indicates a limitation on the possible reference of the head"; no numbers are given. It seems safest to identify restrictive and nonrestrictive appositives as Quirk does, by informational relationship and by differing rhythm, stress, and tone. |
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