Noun Function 7 - Noun Appositives

Now let’s look at some noun structures that can hang directly on sentences all by themselves without prepositions or verbs. We’ll visit the final four functions:

7. Noun Appositives 8. Noun Modifiers 9. Noun Adverbs 10. Noun Absolutes

Let’s start with the noun appositive and use our model sentence to show an example:

7. Noun Appositives

Our model sentence:

The professor, John Smith, is the noun expert, so yesterday he gave the class his views on the importance of learning to write papers clearly, his students feverishly taking notes on all he said.

These structures always show up in the style of powerful writers. A noun appositive is a noun or noun phrase that restates or identifies another noun or noun phrase. Sometimes it is set off by commas and sometimes not. Ordinarily the appositive immediately follows the noun it restates, but in some cases it can begin a sentence and then point directly to the grammatical subject of the sentence.

Let’s look at several of these variations, the appositives appearing in bold:

Hard Copy

You may download our entire discussion of the Parts of Speech. Simply download the Grammar eBook Understanding the Parts of Speech.

 

Previous: Noun Functions 1-6 - Dependent Nouns

Next: Noun Function 8 - Noun Modifiers