2

  1. A friend of mine, George, called the other day.

  2. The poem "The Road Not Taken" is one of Robert Frost's most famous works.

How come sentence 1 requires commas and sentence 2 does not? Both phrases ("George" and "The Road Not Taken") both specify the subject.

user1411469
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2 Answers2

2
  1. A friend of mine, George, called the other day.
  2. The poem "The Road Not Taken" is one of Robert Frost's most famous works.

are, respectively, reduced by Whiz-Deletion from relative clauses

  1. A friend of mine, who is (named) George, called ...
  2. The poem which/that is (entitled) "The Road Not Taken" is one of ...

The relative clause in (3) is a nonrestrictive clause, with comma intonation on either end,
while the one in (4) is a restrictive clause (the kind that allows that instead of which), and
no special intonation or punctuation prescribed.

Either kind of relative clause produces an appositive NP whenever the clause has a predicate noun, and its subject and auxiliary be are removed by Whiz-Deletion. That means there are two kinds of apposition, with the same senses as restrictive and non-restrictive relatives.

Similarly, Whiz-Deletion produces postnominal modifier phrases with other types of predicates that use be auxiliaries:

  1. A tree uprooted by the storm <== A tree that was uprooted by the storm
  2. The man standing on the corner <== The man who is/was standing on the corner
  3. Somebody angry at the authorities <== Somebody who is/was angry at the authorities
Community
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John Lawler
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  • Would you extend the label 'appositive' to the postnominal modifier phrases in (5), (6) and (7)? – Edwin Ashworth Oct 09 '17 at 15:10
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    Insofar as you're referring to the NP node, sure. That's the relation they're in. But the VP is more important than the NP, and predicate adjectives are related quite nicely to post nominal adjectives. Calling them appositive adjectives or participles doesn't seem to clarify anything. – John Lawler Oct 09 '17 at 15:26
  • Does the restrictive/nonrestrictive distinction also apply to postnominal modifier phrases obtained after Whiz-Deletion, like it does to relative clauses and appositives? Also, does it apply to any other category of clauses/phrases/etc.? – HeWhoMustBeNamed Jan 18 '20 at 11:15
  • @MrReality I don't know what kind of clauses you mean. Examples, not descriptions, please. – John Lawler Jan 18 '20 at 17:54
  • @JohnLawler, by "postnominal modifier phrases obtained after Whiz-deletion", I was referring to what you wrote in your last paragraph. Does the restrictive/nonrestrictive distinction apply to the examples you mentioned, and more generally, to all PM phrases obtained after Whiz-deletion? – HeWhoMustBeNamed Jan 22 '20 at 19:35
  • I also wanted to know whether there are any other grammatic constructs having this restrictive/nonrestrictive distinction. E.g, in the following sentence there is a difference in meaning depending on whether the bolded phrase is preceded by a comma or not: "Early Middle English, however, allowed bare singular count nouns in all syntactic positions**". I've heard the bolded phrase referred to as "nonessential", "parenthetical", etc. if it's preceded by a comma: I wanted to know whether those are just different words for "nonrestrictive". And if not, what is the difference? – HeWhoMustBeNamed Jan 22 '20 at 19:47
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    Relative clauses come in those two varieties, and so does anything derived from relative clauses, like participial phrases (The men swimming rapidly ... vs The men, swimming rapidly, ...) or Whiz-Deletion remnants (The men in the dark didn't see him vs The men, in the dark, didn't see him), or NP appositives (My son the doctor ... vs My son, the doctor, .,,. – John Lawler Jan 22 '20 at 21:14
  • @JohnLawler, what about my second question? Is there a major difference between classifying a phrase or clause as parenthetical/nonessential/etc. and classifying it as nonrestrictive? The phrases or clauses I'm talking about that are described as nonessential/parenthetical (e.g. the bolded phrase in the example I gave) don't derive from a relative clause, so they don't strictly fit the nonrestrictive definition, but they do seem to have very much in common with it, since the without-comma version is fully integrated into the rest of the sentence just like a restrictive. . . – HeWhoMustBeNamed Jan 23 '20 at 04:20
  • . . . relative while the with-comma version is understood as an aside or afterthought just like a nonrestrictive relative. So, is there any major difference between parenthetical & nonrestrictive and non-parenthetical & restrictive (that is, apart from that the well-defined structure and charateristics of restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses lends itself well to syntactic anlayses)? – HeWhoMustBeNamed Jan 23 '20 at 04:20
  • "nonessential" and "parenthetical" is a matter of judgement, not grammar. There are syntactic tests that identify restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses. Those are names, not descriptions. How a construction is "understood" is a matter of individual words and context, and not a matter of grammar. You have to distinguish between grammar, which is automatic and not concerned with meaning, and interpretation and usage, which is not automatic and is often concerned with meaning. – John Lawler Jan 23 '20 at 05:02
  • "nonessential" and "parenthetical" is a matter of judgement, not grammar." -- I thought so too, but my understanding doesn't seem to be perfect, because I got confused on reading that the CGEl (2002), relabeling parentheticals as "supplements" or "supplementary constructions", implies that by virtue of being delimited by commas or dashes or parentheses, the supplement fails to be integrated into the syntactic structure, i.e. can't be treated as a syntactic constituent unlike dependency constructions.... So, if my reading was correct, in the sense that it has to be kept separate. . . – HeWhoMustBeNamed Jan 23 '20 at 06:33
  • . . . from the syntactic representation isn't supplementation concerned with syntax and grammar? (.... Or is there more going on? Because I couldn't tell whether the CGEL analyses all nonessential clauses/phrases as "supplementary constructions", or whether there was something special about the constructions it calls "supplementary".) – HeWhoMustBeNamed Jan 23 '20 at 06:43
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    While I admire CGEL, I don't admire its terminological innovations. One needs to distinguish between names and descriptions, and many of the names are interpreted as descriptions of things that can't be distinguished clearly. Grammar exists to support meaning, but meaning does nothing for grammar, which is automatic and meaningless. – John Lawler Jan 23 '20 at 16:19
  • I'm not sure that I understand what you mean, so I'm guessing... I didn't infer what I've wrote about supplements in the above two comments from the word "supplement"; so I wasn't confusing names with descriptions -- maybe I should have written "paraphrasing from the CGEL", instead of "the CGEL ... implies". . . – HeWhoMustBeNamed Jan 28 '20 at 13:43
  • . . . Here are the direct quotes: "It is the lack of integration into the syntactic structure that distinguishes supplementation from dependency constructions and coordination"; "The lack of integration of the supplement into the syntactic structure means that there is no good reason to treat the supplementation as a syntactic constituent. We propose, therefore, that in the syntactic representation supplements should be kept separate from the tree structure, related to their anchors by some different notational device"; "In writing, they [supplements] are normally set off from the rest of. . . – HeWhoMustBeNamed Jan 28 '20 at 13:47
  • . . .the sentence by punctuation marks – commas, or ... dashes, parentheses, or ... a colon." // So, I still have my question: In CGEL, nonrestrictive relatives are a type of supplement; and in its nonexhaustive review of supplement types, it has 9 other subheadings (covering content clauses, PPs, AdvPs, etc., all clearly-distinguishable types). All these supplements, like nonrestrictive relatives, have to be kept separate from the syntactic representation -- therefore, aren't all these other supplements concerned with grammar too? – HeWhoMustBeNamed Jan 28 '20 at 13:47
1

"Rule: When an appositive is essential to the meaning of the noun it belongs to, don’t use commas. When the noun preceding the appositive provides sufficient identification on its own, use commas around the appositive.

"Example: Jorge Torres, our senator, was born in California. Explanation: Our senator is an appositive of the proper noun Jorge Torres. Our senator is surrounded by commas because Jorge Torres is a precise identifier" (from here).

Other examples:

  • My brother Ken is a minister in the PCA denomination.
  • My trainer, Jim Shipshape, is also a bodybuilder.
  • Raconteur Ed Schlemiel will be speaking at the Jewish Community Center tonight.
  • Mezzo-soprano Hilda Gutenberg is a world-class opera singer.
  • Question: Who is coming with you on the canoe trip, and what is his name? Answer: My dad Harold will be accompanying me.

In conclusion, the appositive in your first sentence is George. Does the noun phrase which precedes it provide sufficient identification on its own? The answer is yes. So set off the appositive with commas.

The appositive in your second sentence is "The Road Not Taken." Are the words which precede it (namely, the poem) essential to its meaning? The answer is yes, because Frost wrote many, many poems, but only one of his poems is most famous. Therefore, the poem and "The Road Not Taken" are essential to one another. No commas are needed.

rhetorician
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  • What do you think about the right way to punctuate: 1) "This is my husband John" and 2) “Next week is my wife, Liana's show.”? // And would it be okay to not set off the appositive by commas here: “The United States needs to be ready to press compromise proposals, something Mr. Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, show little interest in doing.”? – HeWhoMustBeNamed Jan 09 '20 at 15:25
  • Also, re: your last example sentence, I find "My dad, Harold, will...." to work there too (I find it more natural in fact, as it lends emphasis on the name of the dad, which I think is natural in the context you provided). Also I find "Charles went to town with his best friend, Mike." unnatural as I don't see someone speaking this sentence with the intonation the comma indicates, but I am an ESL learner, not a native speaker, and the website you linked to says it's correct as given. So what do you think about this? – HeWhoMustBeNamed Jan 09 '20 at 15:40
  • Frankly, I think that rules are meant to be broken. Not always, mind you, but particularly when the way the sentence sounds lends itself either to the use of commas or the non-use of commas. A so-called "violation" of the appositive rule is not as egregious an error as, say, the failure to have the verb agree with the subject in number. Sometimes, you need to let your ear be your guide, not some rule. Don – rhetorician Jan 09 '20 at 16:42