Appositves

Question

An Introductory Series of Appositive. Example:The depressed, the stressed, the lonely, the fearful— all have trouble coping with problems. My doubt is on which basis "The depressed, the stressed, the lonely, the fearful" these words considered as appositives? Could anyone please clarify my doubt?

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

I've always thought they were pronouns. Who says they are appositives?

BillJ · Answer

user nanu
An Introductory Series of Appositive. Example:The depressed, the stressed, the lonely, the fearful— all have trouble coping with problems. My doubt is on which basis "The depressed, the stressed, the lonely, the fearful" these words considered as appositives? Could anyone please clarify my doubt?

Appositives to what?

The depressed, the stressed, the lonely, the fearful— all have trouble coping with problems.

No, they are no appositives, but simply a series of NPs (noun phrases) functioning as subject. They can't be appositives because:

1) An appositive NP always follows the NP it modifies or is anchored to.

2) An appositive is a specifying NP that identifies or re-names another NP, but “all” does not do this.

3) “All” (a determinative) is separable and not part of the subject NP but an optional adjunct in clause structure.

4) An appositive by definition can be substituted for the whole NP (or supplementation) yielding an entailment of the original. But “all have trouble coping with problems” is meaningless since “all” is dependent on an antecedent (the series of NPs) for its meaning and is thus hardly an entailment of “The depressed, the stressed, the lonely, the fearful”.

Examples of genuine appositives are:

I took my wife to see [the opera Carmen]. (integrated, restrictive appositive)

[The murderer – the man with the scar], will be arrested soon. (supplementary, non-restrictive appositive)

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