{"id":3104,"date":"2012-11-26T09:00:37","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T17:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/?p=3104"},"modified":"2020-01-15T10:50:17","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T18:50:17","slug":"gmat-grammar-appositive-phrases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/gmat-grammar-appositive-phrases\/","title":{"rendered":"GMAT Grammar: Appositive Phrases"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friends, Romans, countrymen: It is time to learn about appositive phrases!\u00a0 But first, a practice sentence:<\/p>\n

1. Being America’s national bird, the Bald Eagle has little natural predators like the Great Horned Owl, and their population dwindling to almost nothing up to the point of DDT being banned<\/span>.<\/p>\n

(A) Being America’s national bird, the Bald Eagle has little natural predators like the Great Horned Owl, and their population dwindling to almost nothing up to the point of DDT being banned.<\/p>\n

(B) Like the Great Horned Owl, the Bald Eagle, America’s national bird, has few natural predators, yet its population dwindled to almost nothing until DDT was banned.<\/p>\n

(C) The Bald Eagle, like the Great Horned Owl, America’s national bird, has little natural predators, but their population having dwindling to almost until DDT had been banned.<\/p>\n

(D) The Bald Eagle, America’s national bird, has a very small number of natural predators, as does the Great Horned Owl, but its population dwindling to almost nothing until DDT is banned.<\/p>\n

(E) The Bald Eagle, which is America’s national bird, has few natural predators as the Great Horned Owl, as its population dwindling to almost nothing until DDT was banned.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A special kind of modifier<\/h2>\n

All noun modifiers give us some kind of information about the noun they modify.\u00a0 In some ways, the most “intimate” information one could give about a noun is\u00a0to say\u00a0what it is.\u00a0 An appositive is a second noun that\u00a0follows a first noun and is identical to the first noun.\u00a0 When this second noun is modified by an adjective, and possibly even modifying subordinate clauses, it becomes an appositive phrase.\u00a0 Sometimes the phrase is used rhetorically, as Mark Antony used it at the opening of Julius Caesar’s funeral oration in Shakespeare’s play<\/a>, quoted above — “friends” and “Romans” and “countrymen” are not<\/strong> three different groups, but three ways to refer to the same<\/em> group of people. \u00a0Rhetorical use of the appositive is a highly unlikely construction to encounter on the GMAT Sentence Correction. Often the appositive phrase is a clarifying description, meant to inform folks who might not be familiar with the first noun. This is almost always how it appears on the GMAT. \u00a0\u00a0For example —-<\/p>\n

2) Claude Debussy<\/a>, a great French composer, \u2026.<\/p>\n

3) Rhodesia<\/a>, the region that eventually became Zimbabwe<\/a>, \u2026<\/p>\n

4) The “wallpaper group<\/a>,” the set of the fourteen possible symmetry patterns in two dimensions,\u2026.<\/p>\n

All three of these are of the form [noun][modifier], and would need at least a verb before they could be considered a complete sentence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Punctuation: the weight of a comma<\/h2>\n

In the three examples above, there was a comma between the first noun and the appositive phrase.\u00a0 Is a comma always required?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Is the comma optional?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Is there a special rule about when the comma is required and when it isn’t?\u00a0 YES!\u00a0 That rule is none other than the distinction of vital modifiers<\/a>, a.k.a. essential modifiers, a.k.a. restrictive modifiers<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 When the modifier (appositive or other kind of modifier) is purely descriptive, and not necessary\u00a0to establish the identity of the noun, it is a non-vital, non-essential modifier, and these are ALWAYS separated by commas<\/strong>.\u00a0 In #2-4 above, all three are non-vital, because Claude Debussy and Rhodesia and the wallpaper group all have extremely well-defined identities, regardless of whether the reader has heard of them, and the modifier is simply descriptive for those who might not know.\u00a0\u00a0 By contrast,<\/p>\n

5) My friend Chris<\/a> enjoys beating me in foosball.<\/p>\n

The name “Chris” is an appositive modifying the noun “friend” — in other words, I have several friends, so just saying “my friend” does not determine a unique identity.\u00a0 The name “Chris” is needed to determine the identity — that is precisely what makes it a vital modifier.\u00a0 Vital modifiers are NEVER separated by commas<\/strong> from the rest of the sentence.\u00a0\u00a0 If I were to say \u2026.<\/p>\n

5a) My friend, Chris, \u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026 this would imply that I had only one friend in the world, that saying “my friend” uniquely determined that single individual, and that the name “Chris” was merely informative, given for all those people who happen not to know the name of my one and only friend in the whole world.\u00a0 Most healthy people would say something like “My friend Chris \u2026”, but the person who said “My friend, Chris, \u2026” \u2014 well, we would be severely worried about the psychological health of someone who had only one friend in the world.\u00a0 The presence or absence of commas makes a HUGE difference in this context.<\/p>\n

Another example of this distinction:<\/p>\n

6a) My wife, Lucy, \u2026..<\/p>\n

6b) My wife Lucy<\/p>\n

The first has commas and thus treats the name as a non-vital modifier: this means the words “my wife” are sufficient to determine the identity of a unique individual, and the name is merely provided as information.\u00a0\u00a0 This would be the situation of most ordinary married people — that is, people who are married to only one<\/em>\u00a0partner!<\/p>\n

By contrast, the second doesn’t have commas, which implies that the name is a vital modifier!\u00a0 In other words, for that person, the words “my wife” do not determine a unique individual, because, apparently, that person has multiple wives, and therefore has to specify the name of one woman out of the several who could be called “my wife.”\u00a0 If someone is able to use #6b in a grammatically correct sense, they are practicing something<\/a> that is illegal in all 50 states.\u00a0 Just think about it: in this instance, commas denote the difference between a completely legal marital situation and a 100% illegal marital situation — that’s how important punctuation is!<\/p>\n

Having read this article, take another look at the practice question above, and see if you understand it better before you read through the explanation below.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Practice question explanation<\/h2>\n

1) There are several important splits.\u00a0 First let’s talk about the “little” vs. “few<\/a>” split. \u00a0“Natural predators” are\u00a0something one can count, so when we are talking about a limited number of something we can count, the correct word is “few” — the phrase “few natural predators” in (B) <\/strong>and (E)<\/strong> is 100% correct, the phrase “little natural predators” in (A)<\/strong> and (C)<\/strong> is completely wrong, and the phrase “a very small number of natural predators” in (D)<\/strong> is technically correct but very wordy — we would only go with that as a last resort.<\/p>\n

The next split I’ll look at is the conjunction opening the second part of the sentence.\u00a0 What we need is a contrast — the Bald Eagle has few predators, which you think would mean it would naturally thrive.\u00a0 By contrast, because of DDT, its numbers were dwindling.\u00a0 Expect high number, get low numbers — that’s a contrast.\u00a0 We need a contrast word for the conjunction. The word “yet” in (B)<\/strong> and “but” in (C)<\/strong> & (D)<\/strong> provide this strong contrast, whereas the “and” of (A)<\/strong> and the “as” of (E)<\/strong> are insufficient.<\/p>\n

Now let’s look at the handling of the appositive.\u00a0 Choices (B)<\/strong> & (D)<\/strong> have the proper appositive construction \u2014 they name the “Bald Eagle” \u2014 and then a comma for the non-vital appositive description “America’s national bird.”\u00a0 (C)<\/strong>, through a misplaced modifier, attributes the status of national bird to the wrong bird.\u00a0 (A)<\/strong> has an awkward “being” construction, and (E)<\/strong> constructs a longer, more awkward phrase.\u00a0\u00a0 Clearly, the appositive structure of (B)<\/strong> & (D)<\/strong> is the best among these choices.<\/p>\n

Finally, look at the second half of the sentence.\u00a0 We need a full noun + verb construction, a complete clause.\u00a0 Four of the five answers make the “missing verb<\/a>” mistake, with participles like “dwindling” or “having dwindled” instead of a bonafide verb; only (B)<\/strong> has a genuine verb, “dwindled.”<\/p>\n

That’s more than enough to isolate (B)<\/strong> as the best answer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friends, Romans, countrymen: It is time to learn about appositive phrases!\u00a0 But first, a practice sentence: 1. Being America’s national bird, the Bald Eagle has little natural predators like the Great Horned Owl, and their population dwindling to almost nothing up to the point of DDT being banned. (A) Being America’s national bird, the Bald […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[146],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[13209],"class_list":["post-3104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grammar"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGMAT Grammar: Appositive Phrases - Magoosh Blog \u2014 GMAT\u00ae Exam<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/gmat-grammar-appositive-phrases\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"GMAT Grammar: Appositive Phrases\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Friends, Romans, countrymen: It is time to learn about appositive phrases!\u00a0 But first, a practice sentence: 1. 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Beyond standardized testing, Mike has over 20 years of both private and public high school teaching experience specializing in math and physics. In his free time, Mike likes smashing foosballs into orbit, and despite having no obvious cranial deficiency, he insists on rooting for the NY Mets. Learn more about the GMAT through Mike's Youtube video explanations.","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/MagooshGMATChannel\/featured"],"award":["Magna cum laude from Harvard"],"knowsAbout":["GMAT"],"knowsLanguage":["English"],"jobTitle":"Content Creator","worksFor":"Magoosh","url":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/author\/mikemcgarry\/"}]}},"authors":[{"term_id":13209,"user_id":26,"is_guest":0,"slug":"mikemcgarry","display_name":"Mike M\u1d9cGarry","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6b06de81592cd77bb46aa560cc59aee179cba4d042835c3529221ea1b344cce0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","user_url":"","last_name":"M\u1d9cGarry","first_name":"Mike","description":"Mike served as a GMAT Expert at Magoosh, helping create hundreds of lesson videos and practice questions to help guide GMAT students to success. He was also featured as \"member of the month\" for over two years at <a href=\"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/mike-mcgarrys-gmat-experience\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">GMAT Club<\/a>. Mike holds an A.B. in Physics (graduating <em>magna cum laude<\/em>) and an M.T.S. in Religions of the World, both from Harvard. Beyond standardized testing, Mike has over 20 years of both private and public high school teaching experience specializing in math and physics. In his free time, Mike likes smashing foosballs into orbit, and despite having no obvious cranial deficiency, he insists on rooting for the NY Mets. Learn more about the GMAT through Mike's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/MagooshGMATChannel\/featured\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Youtube <\/a>video explanations and resources like <a href=\"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/whats-a-good-gmat-score\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">What is a Good GMAT Score?<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/gmat-diagnostic-test\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">GMAT Diagnostic Test<\/a>."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3104"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=3104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}