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Apposition in Contemporary English is the first full-length treatment of apposition. It provides detailed discussion of its linguistic characteristics and of its usage in various kinds of speech and writing, derived from the data of British and American computer corpora. Charles Meyer demonstrates the inadequacies of previous studies and argues that apposition is a grammatical relation realized by constructions having particular syntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics, of which certain are dominant. The language of press reportage, fiction, learned writing and spontaneous conversation is analyzed.
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Apposition in contemporary English is the first full-length treatment of apposition. Derived from the Survey of English Usage Corpus of Written British English, the Brown University Standard Corpus of Present-day American English, and the London-Lund Corpus of Spoken British English, it provides detailed discussion of the linguistic characteristics of apposition and of its usage in various kinds of speech and writing. These include press reportage, fiction, learned writing and spontaneous conversation. Charles Meyer demonstrates the inadequacies of previous studies and argues that apposition is a grammatical relation (like complementation and modification) realized by constructions having particular syntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics, of which certain are dominant. Thus, syntactically, apposition is most frequently a relation between two juxtaposed noun phrases having a syntactic function (such as a direct object) promoting end-weight. Semantically, it is typically a relation between two referentially related units, the second of which adds specificity to the interpretation of the first. Pragmatically, different kinds of apposition have different communicative functions. STUDIES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE Executive Editor: Sidney Greenbaum Advisory Editors: John Algeo, Rodney Huddleston, Magnus Ljung Apposition in contemporary English Studies in English Language The aim of this series is to provide a framework for original studies of present-day English. All are based securely on empirical research, and represent theoretical and descriptive contributions to our knowledge of national varieties of English, both written and spoken. The series will cover a broad range of topics in English grammar, vocabulary, discourse and pragmatics, and is aimed at an international readership. Already published Christian Mair Infinitival complement clauses in English Forthcoming Jan Firbas Functional sentence perspective in written and spoken communication John Algeo A study of British-American grammatical differences Apposition in contemporary English CHARLES F. MEYER Department of English, University of Massachusetts at Boston The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge New York Port Chester Melbourne Sydney CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521394758 © Cambridge University Press 1992 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1992 This digitally printed first paperback version 2006 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congre