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Two nouns referring to the same idea often occur together, sometimes with a comma between them
DEFINITION AND GENERAL PURPOSE OF APPOSITION
Noun positions in a sentence (subject, object, complement etc.) are sometimes filled by two or more nouns (or noun phrases) placed directly together. There are various ways in which the nouns may relate to each other. The first noun may resemble an adjective describing the second, as in fuel prices (see 38. Nouns Used like Adjectives); or the nouns may form a list (see 50. Right and Wrong Comma Places); or the first noun may have a “possessive” apostrophe (see 58. Optional Apostrophe Endings). Here, I want to examine a kind of noun pair in which both of the nouns refer to the same thing, e.g.:
(a) Two main ethnic groups populate Sri Lanka, an island south of India.
The two underlined noun phrases here both refer to Sri Lanka. Moreover, the verb (populate) is not one whose meaning requires such pairing (see 92. Verbs with an Object + “As” ).
Technically, such noun combinations are called “apposition”. Some have punctuation around the second noun expression, some do not. Sometimes there is an adverb before the second noun expression, for example geographically above or past-referring then (see 282. Features of History Writing, #8). Apposition improves understanding of what the nouns stand for. It is of three main kinds.
One apposition type that I am not considering here, though, is where the second noun represents part of the idea of the first, often as an example (see 54. Sentence Lists 1: Incidental). Also excluded here is apposition whose first half is a whole statement rather than a noun phrase (see 191. Exotic Grammar Structures 3, #5), and apposition whose first noun names a reason for what the rest of the sentence says (see 228. Exotic Grammar Structures 5, #3).
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MAIN APPOSITION TYPES
The three typical apposition types are idea + description, description + idea, and idea + idea.
1. Idea + Description
This Combination is present in the following:
(a) Two main ethnic groups populate Sri Lanka, an island south of India.
(b) Floods, always a threat, are becoming more widespread.
(c) The defendant, a man of 45, was accompanied by two policemen.
(d) Ringo Starr, the Beatle drummer, joined the group last.
(e) Apposition, the juxtaposition of two or more nouns referring to the same thing, is common in professional writing.
(f) Paris(,) the capital of France(,) has a long history.
In all of these, the first noun names the idea and the second describes or interprets it. In all but the last, the description must be surrounded by two commas (or similar: see 294. Parentheses). Because noun phrases surrounded by commas are also common in lists, a double meaning sometimes arises (see 233. Structures with a Double Meaning 3, #1).
A further feature of (a)-(e) is that the applicability of the description to the idea is presented as new information to the addressee (i.e. not already known – see 156. Mentioning what the Reader Knows Already), or at least a reminder.
In sentences (a)-(c), the description is not unique to the idea it describes. For example, a threat in (b) could describe many other situations besides floods. Reflecting this, the describing nouns all follow a or an. In sentences (d)-(f), by contrast, the description applies only to the idea before it, and begins as a result with the.
In sentence (d), the description the Beatle drummer will sometimes be not just describing Ringo Starr, but also identifying him. In (e), the description is additionally a definition. During reading, there is a need to recognise apposition with a defining role in order to prevent time being wasted guessing the meaning of the defined noun or looking it up in a dictionary (see 177. How to Guess Meanings in a Text). Sometimes the defining role is made clearer by the presence of in other words or that is to say before the second noun phrase (see 286. Repeating in Different Words, #4).
In sentence (f) the meaning depends on whether or not commas are present. With them, the apposition is like that in (d), just adding a new fact about an idea implied to be the only one in existence. Without commas, however, the description in (f) is separating one idea of Paris from another: it identifies Paris as the one in France, not Texas, USA. Although (d) could also be identifying, it does not identify in this way. This separating use seems to be the only one where the addressee is expected to already know the link between the description and the idea.
Apposition that allows a choice about commas in the way that (f) does is very similar to statements made with a relative pronoun like who or which (see 34. Relative Pronouns and Commas). Indeed, (f) is easily paraphrased with a relative pronoun, e.g. the Paris that is the capital of France (see 47. Article Errors with Proper Nouns). Other examples like (f) without commas are John the Baptist, Jack the Ripper and Ford the motor manufacturer.
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2. Description + Idea
Here, the two types of noun phrase are the same as above, but in reverse order:
(g) The upmarket cars Mercedes and Rolls Royce have iconic radiator designs.
(h) (The) Beatle John Lennon died in 1980.
(i) Figure 3 summarises the results.
(j) The article “a” is incorrect before many nouns.
(k) An article, (namely) “the”, is usually correct with superlative adjectives.
(l) The Beatle drummer(,) (namely) Ringo Starr(,) joined the group last.
(m) The definite article(,) (namely) “the”(,) is rare before plural generic nouns.
In this use, the second noun phrase indicates either “which one” is meant by the preceding description or, if the description refers to a singular idea, “who/what I mean”. In general terms, the idea specifies more precisely what the description refers too.
Apposition is not the only way to specify: for other possibilities, see 117. Restating Generalizations More Specifically. When specifying apposition is a list, like Mercedes and Rolls Royce in (g) above, various language pitfalls have to be avoided (see 54. Sentence Lists 1: Incidental).
It will be seen that the apposition lacks commas in (g), (h), (i) and (j), needs them in (k), and allows a choice in (l) and (m). Also noticeable is that the adverb namely before the second noun phrase is only possible when commas are present. Namely is a different sort of adverb from the kind that can precede a description, like geographically in (a) (see 313. Adverbs Linked Closely to a Noun). In (l) and (m), where the first noun phrase has the, namely is replaceable by in other words.
The reason for the absent commas in (g)-(j) is that the starting description could by itself (without the) mean one or more other possibilities than the idea indicated by the second noun phrase. Upmarket cars in (g) could additionally represent Ferrari; Beatle in (h) could indicate Ringo Starr or Paul McCartney; figure in (i) could refer to figures with other numbers; and article in (j) could mean “a” as well as “the”.
This type of meaning causes the idea represented by the second noun phrase to be clarifying which of the possibilities is meant, so that paraphrase with a relative pronoun (without commas) again becomes possible: one could add which are to (g), who was to (h) and which is to (j).
Sentence (k) resembles (g)-(j) in that its starting description could mean other possibilities than the one indicated by the subsequent idea, but its need for commas is a major difference. This need is perhaps because the first noun phrase (an article) has an rather than the or no article: there may indeed be a general rule that starting with a(n) makes commas necessary.
In (l) and (m), the choice concerning commas results from the two parts of the apposition there being exactly equal: Beatle drummer always means only Ringo Starr, and definite article refers only to the.
The difference between using and not using commas in such sentences may be as follows. The commas seem to suggest that the addressee does not already know the link between the description and the idea – for example they do not know who the Beatle drummer is (though they might know Ringo Starr). The second noun phrase is then establishing this link. Not having commas, by contrast, suggests that the addressee already knows the name-description link, so that the name is more reminding than telling.
Finally, there are some observations to make about the use of the before the description. Sentences (h) and (i) both begin with a singular countable noun (Beatle, figure) without any word before it – normally ungrammatical (see 110. Nouns without “the” or “a”). The most logical word to add is the.
In (h), the is easily added. Its absence is possible only if four conditions are met: an appropriate context (often journalistic – see 166. Appropriacy in Professional English); apposition starting with a description; a first noun representing a human being; and absent commas. Related to this use is titles like President Mandela, though adding the to these makes more of a difference, removing their title status.
In (i), on the other hand, dropping the is compulsory. There is no real logic here – it is just a general rule that the cannot precede apposition ending in a number (except years, e.g. the year 1927). Other examples are page 6, day 3, type B and house 27 (see 235. Special Uses of “the”, #3).
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3. Idea + Idea
Sometimes both of the noun phrases in an apposition construction name the same idea:
(n) The skull, or cranium, houses the brain.
In this use, parenthetical punctuation is always needed. The reader is usually assumed to already know one of the two idea names and to be in need of knowing the other. The new name can be either the first or the second of the two noun phrases. Mentioned second, as here, it normally follows or or alternatively known as (sometimes abbreviated to aka). If the would normally be needed before either of the names used by itself, as above, it may be dropped after or but not otherwise.
When the new name is the first noun phrase, extra words are not compulsory (The cranium, the skull, …), but are often used. Or is still possible but so are in other words, i.e. and that is to say.
A name in the idea + idea use can easily be descriptive, as in the following:
(o) The shoulder blades, or scapulae, are in a posterior position just below each shoulder.
Here, shoulder blades is a name as well as a description because it is the everyday way of referring to this part of the body (see 206. Ways of Conveying a Name). It is this fact that distinguishes apposition like (o) from that comprising a description + idea, as in (m).
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