The structure of appositional constructions

Transcription

1 The structure of appositional constructions Coordination, parataxis and predication? First year report Herman Heringa CLCG Department of Linguistics University of Groningen

2 Contents 1 Introduction A definition for appositions Overview A structure for appositions Apposition markers Predication Sentential adverbs? Paraphrasis by relative clauses? Different semantics, one syntax? Non-nominal and unbalanced appositions Conclusion A structure for appositional constructions Apposition and coordination Resemblances Differences Specifying coordination Structural consequences Apposition and parataxis Prosodic and discourse backgrounding Is coordination parataxis? Other paratactic features Structural consequences Apposition and predication V2-relatives revisited Structural consequence Extra questions Extraposition Epithets Conclusion...21 References...22 Appendix I: Activities first year...24 Appendix II: Schedule coming years...25 Appendix III: Submitted article (in Dutch)...not in this version - 2 -

3 1 Introduction In this report, I give an overview of my investigation of the structure for appositional constructions so far. The report presents data that should be explained by a theoretical model of appositional construction. Based upon these data, some hypotheses of what the underlying structure can look like are made. In particular, I show that there is a relation between appositional constructions on the one hand and coordination, parataxis and predication on the other hand. I propose a syntactic structure that combines these notions. Of course, the predictions of the hypotheses have to be tested and the report leaves several open questions which have to be investigated in the continuation of this project. First of all, however, it is clear that we need to define what apposition is exactly. 1.1 A definition for appositions In Heringa & de Vries (2006; see appendix III), we define appositions as specifying nonrestrictive postmodifiers modifying a phrase. This implies that so-called restrictive appositions are not included in the definition, because their syntactic structure is clearly different. These restrictive modifiers have a closer relation to the modified phrase. In (1), it is shown that it is impossible to insert a PP between a restrictive apposition and its anchor, whereas this is possible in a non-restrictive construction (cf. Wiers, 1978: 64): (1) a * The book by Tolkien The Lord of the Rings, (restrictive) b This book by Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (non-restrictive) The definition also implies that verbless adverbial clauses (cf. Quirk et al., 1985:996, 1314), like those in (2), are included in the class of appositions. We call them unbalanced appositional constructions, because the modifier and its anchor differ in syntactic category. (2) a Raymond, ever mindful of his manners, b Mavis, her hands in her lap, Moreover, the definition implies that non-restrictive relative clauses are appositions too. See de Vries (to appear) for an approach in which appositive relative clauses are indeed handled as extended appositions. For now, we assume that these constructions all have the same underlying syntactic structure. 1.2 Overview In order to find out the details of this structure, we first have a look at the apposition on its own. Section 2 presents some important features of the apposition, namely apposition markers (2.1), a possible correspondence to predication (2.2), the relation with semantic classes (2.3) and the possibility of different syntactic categories (2.4). Section 3 focuses on the relation between the anchor and the apposition and describes in that way the whole appositional construction. It shows that this relation shares some features with - 3 -

4 coordination (3.1), with parataxis (3.2) and, again, with predication (3.3). Each of the descriptions of these resemblances is followed by some suggestions about consequences for the structure of appositions. In section 4 some other questions, about extraposition and about epithets, are posed. Section 5 gives the conclusion. 2 A structure for appositions Since the constructions mentioned in section 1.1 are not always classified as appositions in the literature (cf. Haeseryn et al., 1997, ao), we have to find out whether there are good reasons to separate them from appositions, or whether they are just subclasses of appositions, but have in fact the same syntactic structure. Therefore, the question is what syntactic structure appositions have. In order to answer this question, some important features of appositions should be taken into account. 2.1 Apposition markers First, the structure for appositions needs a position for explicit apposition markers. These words or sequences of words, usually precede the actual apposition, see (3)a/b. Some of them, however, like that is, that is to say and for example, can also follow the actual apposition, witness (3)c/d, and there are even some markers, like included, which can only appear at the end, as in (3)e/f (cf. Quirk et al., 1985:1307). (3) a A company commander, namely Captain Madison, b * A company commander, Captain Madison namely, c Dickens s most productive period, that is the 1840s, d Dickens s most productive period, the 1840s that is, e * Many people, included my sister, f Many people, my sister included, It is important to note that apposition markers can consist of a sequence of words, sometimes including verbs. This suggests that they are not just function words, but complete CP s. Of course, they could be analysed as multi-token units which function just as one word. It seems, however, that some of these markers can still be modified as if they are real sentences. In Dutch, for example, an adverb can occur in the middle of an apposition marker like dat wil zeggen, that is to say: (4) De man die naast mij woont, dat wil dus zeggen mijn buurman, The man who next to me lives, that wants so to say my neighbour, The man who lives next to me, so that is to say my neighbour, Furthermore, the flexible position of the apposition marker needs some attention. Apparently, this marker has no fixed position, which makes the syntactic structure less clear. In this respect, the markers look like some initial coordinators, which are - 4 -

5 sometimes also found in an unexpected position, namely higher up in the clause, inside the first conjunct or directly preceding the conjunction (de Vries, 2005: 3/4), in Dutch: (5) a Noch heeft hij gezegd dat ze moet blijven, noch dat ze weg moet gaan. Neither has he said that she has to stay, nor that she has away to go. b Niet alleen is Joop zeer rijk, maar hij gaat ook goed gekleed. Not only is Joop very rich, but he is also well-dressed. c Joop houdt van macaroni evenmin als van spaghetti. Joop likes macaroni as little as spaghetti. Maybe even more important with respect to apposition markers is that they do not need to be there. Actually, it seems that there are much more appositions without (asyndetic) than with a marker. This means that appositional constructions often look like juxtaposition and we have to find out what this means for the underlying structure. 2.2 Predication In the past, several arguments have been used to analyse appositions as an instance of (nominal) predication (e.g. Doron, 1994), or at least to assume that appositions have an underlying sentential structure. Intuitively, this seems to be attractive, since the meaning of appositions corresponds to that of predication. If an appositional construction like John, a linguistic celebrity, is used, this implies that John is a linguistic celebrity. If we want to implement this intuition, however, it should be evident that appositions and predication indeed share (some of) their features. In the coming sections, two of these features are presented and discussed Sentential adverbs? One of the arguments in favour of predication that is used in the literature is that appositions can contain sentential adverbs (Klein, 1977; Quirk et al., 1985: 1314). (6) a Norman Jones, then a student, wrote several best-sellers. b They elected as chairman Edna Jones, also a Cambridge graduate. This is also true for floating quantifiers and negation (Doron, 1994: 56). (7) a The men, both/some/all doctors, were awarded medals. b Orville Wright, not Wilbur, made the first flight at Kitty Hawk. Note that, in identifying appositions, these adverbs are in complementary distribution with apposition markers. In attributive and inclusive appositions, however, apposition markers and adverbs can co-occur. In attributive appositions the adverb follows the marker, whereas in inclusive appositions the adverb precedes the marker. See the examples in (8) in Dutch

6 (8) a Mijn buurman, overigens vermoedelijk een goede handelaar, My neighbour, by the way presumably a good trader, b Wetenschappers, duidelijk inclusief linguisten, Scientists, obviously including linguists, The possibility of incorporating sentential adverbs indeed suggests that the apposition has a sentential structure. Klein (1977: 50), however, already points out that sentential adverbs occur in ordinary NP s too. The question is then, of course, whether these adverbs really are sentential: (9) a De vermoedelijk blonde daders The presumably blond perpetrators b De helaas nog te jonge vader The unfortunately still too young father Paraphrasis by relative clauses? Another feature that has been used as an argument in favour of a sentential structure for appositions is the possibility of paraphrasing the apposition with an appositive relative clause, or, if our definition is correct, even the inclusion of these relative clauses in the class of appositions. Besides analyses in which relative clauses are handled as extended appositions (e.g. de Vries, 2006), there are indeed analyses in which appositions are described as reduced relative clauses (e.g. Del Gobbo, 2003). Though there is a clear relation between relative clauses and appositions, it is not always possible to paraphrase an apposition by a (copular) relative clause. Compare (10a) to (1b) and (10b) to (3f): (10) a * This book by Tolkien, which is The Lord of the Rings,... b * Many people, who are my sister included... This possibility of paraphrasing with a copular relative clause is related to the semantic class of apposition. Attributive appositions can be paraphrased in this way; identifying and inclusive appositions can not. Of course, it is possible to paraphrase (1b) and (3f) by a relative clause, however, it is difficult to see what reduction would look like if the original relative clauses differ in their verbs and word order that much: (11) a This book by Tolkien, which is called The Lord of the Rings,... b Many people, among which my sister is included,... It is not clear which conclusion should be drawn about the analysis of appositions as predication. The arguments presented are under discussion. More arguments are needed therefore. In section 3.3, the issue will be raised again. 2.3 Different semantics, one syntax? As stated above, the possibility of paraphrasing the apposition with an appositive relative clause depends on the semantic type of apposition (Wiers, 1978). Of course, it is possible - 6 -

7 that the several semantic classes of apposition, as described in Heringa & de Vries (2006), differ also syntactically. It could be that attributive appositions have to be analysed as reduced relative clauses and that identifying and inclusive appositions are something else. The distinction between these classes correlates also with a distinction between two different types of predication, however: specificational (12) and predicational (13) predication (cf. Higgins 1979; Blom & Daalder, 1977: 66/67). (12) a Wat Jan ons aanraadde was niet te laat weg te gaan. What Jan us advised was not too late away to go. What Jan advised us was not to leave late. b Zijn fout was dat hij zich snel liet intimideren. His mistake was that he himself fast let to intimidate. His mistake was that he let himself intimidate easily. c Mijn eerste plaat was Help. My first record was Help. (13) a Wat Jan ons aanraadde was te realiseren. What Jan us advised was to realise. What Jan advised us was practicable. b Zijn fout was begrijpelijk. His mistake was understandable. c Die jongens zijn de winnaars. Those boys are the winners. Therefore, a different syntactic structure for different types of appositions implies a different syntactic structure for these types of predication. There seem to be no reasons for that (cf. Blom & Daalder, 1977), though. With respect to this, it is necessary to find out what these two types of predication mean and especially what attribution is exactly. Other features for which the semantic classes differ, like the possibility of extraposition and possible appearance in questions (Wiers, 1978), are under debate (Bennis, 1978) and have to be worked out systematically, before conclusions can be drawn. Besides, it would be interesting to find out whether the semantic classes we found for Dutch (and English) exist in other languages too. If the classification is more general in languages, it is more likely that this is also represented in the syntactic structure than if the classification is just used in some Germanic languages. Of course, it is preferable to analyse constructions as much as possible in the same way. Therefore, I assume for now that the different classes have the same syntactic structure and differ in meaning and semantic properties only. 2.4 Non-nominal and unbalanced appositions In the literature on appositions, most attention has been given to nominal appositions: constructions in which both the anchor and the apposition are nominal. It is evident, however, that appositions can consist of all possible syntactic categories: NP, AP, PP, VP, and CP. It is not even necessary that the anchor and the apposition have the same - 7 -

8 syntactic category. They can be unbalanced too (see section 1.1 above and section below). The examples in (12a-c) are from Burton-Roberts (1975:410); (12d) is from Meyer (1992: 34): (14) a They met here, in London. (AP/PP, PP) b He ran absolutely raced up the hill. (V/VP, V/VP) c You won t be totally alone, that s to say, there ll be others to help you. (CP, CP) d The occupation of the territory by the colonial power was wholly indefensible, the wicked work of evil men. (AP, NP/DP) This means that we need a kind of meta-structure which does not specify the possible phrases, but describes an abstract structure in which all kinds of maximal projections can be inserted. In this respect it is clear that for the structure of apposition it is important to look at the complete appositional construction, and especially the type of grammatical relation between apposition and anchor, a type of relation that stands in opposition to complementation and modification, for example (Meyer, 1992). 2.5 Conclusion For now, we conclude that a structure for appositions needs a position for an apposition marker. This apposition marker probably is sentence-like and therefore may consist of a (small) CP. There are several arguments suggesting that the apposition looks like a (reduced) clause too. Since these arguments are under debate, however, we leave it open whether the apposition should be analysed as predication or some other sentential structure or not. In section 3.3, I come back to this 3 A structure for appositional constructions As stated before, it is important to find out which type of grammatical relation exists between an apposition and its anchor, in order to define the syntactic structure of the complete appositional construction. Therefore, we need to explore some characteristics of appositional constructions. In the following sections the appositional constructions are compared to coordination (section 3.1), parataxis (section 3.2) and predication (section 3.3). 3.1 Apposition and coordination Some of the features of appositions described in section 2, namely the position for a marker, the possibility of incorporating sentential adverbs, and the possibility to be implemented by all kinds of syntactic categories, they have in common with the second conjunct in coordination. Therefore, this section investigates whether there are more resemblances between apposition and coordination (section 3.1.1) and which differences - 8 -

9 there are (section 3.1.2). For the comparison between apposition and coordination features of coordination are used from Progovac (1998) and de Vries (to appear b). Section concludes that apposition indeed has a lot in common with coordination and it is even suggested to belong to a distinct type of coordination: specifying coordination, which results in the structure presented in section Resemblances Coordinations and appositional constructions both have a position for a marker of the construction in the second part: the second conjunct or the apposition. In most cases, this marker is also in the same position: in the front of the second part. As stated in section 2.1, however, both coordinators and apposition markers can have unexpected other positions. It is even more important that coordination and apposition sometimes use the same connectors. Coordinators like and, or (Quirk et al., 1985: 1311, 1312) and but, occasionally appear as (part of) apposition markers as well. (15) a The United States of America, or America for short, b You could cut the atmosphere with a knife, and a blunt knife at that. c John likes to eat everything, but especially ice cream. Just as was shown for apposition in section 2.2, coordination allows sentential adverbs in the second part of the construction too, though in apposition it is much more common. (16) a John and maybe Mary went to the store. b John, obviously a carpenter, often appears in linguistic environments. As stated before, the appositional construction is able to connect phrases of all kinds of syntactic categories. Though the apposition and its anchor do not need to be of the same syntactic category, usually they are. If they are not, the phrases are at least similar in a semantic view and probably both have to satisfy the subcategorization of the verb in the matrix sentence. See the examples in (12) above. This type of connection between phrases of the same category is also found in coordination (e.g. Sag et al., 1985; Sag, 2002). Furthermore, both apposition and coordination are between symmetry and antisymmetry. The apposition always specifies the anchor and not the other way round (asymmetry), though for the class of identification apposition and anchor are coreferential and can be reversed in their order (symmetry). In coordination the first and second conjunct are called equal parts (symmetry). However, only the second conjunct forms a constituent with the coordinator, as can be shown by extraposition of the second conjunct or by replacing both the second conjunct and the coordinator by etcetera (asymmetry). The apposition also forms a constituent with an apposition marker. Also, both coordination and apposition lack at least some features of c-command. Several tests can be used for that, and they are not all clear, but the general impression is that the second conjunct and the apposition are not c-commanded by the first conjunct and the anchor, or by other material in the host sentence. The only clear case is extraction. This is not possible out of the second conjunct or out of an apposition: - 9 -

10 (17) a * Who did you see Mary and _? b * What did you see Chimp, that is _? Another test is Q-binding, which can take place if the quantifier is in the host, but not if it is in the anchor or in the first conjunct. In Dutch, that is, for English it has been claimed that this type of q-binding is grammatical at least for coordination: (18) a * [Elke man] i en zijn i vrouw gingen naar de film. Every man and his wife went to the movie. b * [Elke zelfstandige] i, zijn i eigen baas, moet zelf pensioen opbouwen. Every shopkeeper, his own boss, must himself pension set up. c [Elke man] i houdt van eten en van zijn i vrouw. Every man holds of food and of his wife. Every man loves food and his wife. d [Elke man] i houdt van eten, zijn i eerste levensbehoefte. [Every man] loves food, his first necessity of life. It is not very clear whether condition C has to be satisfied both for coordination and apposition. Some examples suggest that it is not there, implying that there is no c- command either. (19) a Hij i vertelde me dat de reis leuk was en dat iedereen aardig was geweest He told me that the trip nice was and that everybody kind was been tegen Jan i. to Jan. b Hij i vertelde me dat de reis leuk was geweest, maar vooral dat iedereen He told me that the trip nice was been, but especially that everybody aardig tegen Jan i was geweest. nice to Jan was been. It is clear, however, that it is difficult to test whether there is c-command. For coordination this is under debate, though it seems that people at least agree that the second conjunct is not always c-commanded by the first. For apposition the tests are even less clear. I will return to this in section 3.2. Another shared feature is that both multiple coordination and multiple apposition exist. In coordination there is a difference between stacked and recursive multiplicity. In (20a), for example, the three conjuncts are just strung together, whereas in (20bc) two coordinated constituents are again combined in coordination with another constituent. Note that stacked coordination is regarded as the normal case, but still it is the problematic one for syntactic structure. After all, recursion and binary branching are part of the syntactic system, but for stacked coordination it is not clear how this should be represented in a binary way:

11 (20) a John and Mary and Pete went to the store. b John and [Mary and Pete] went to the store. c [John and Mary] and Pete went to the store. For apposition there is no difference in meaning between stacked and recursive apposition. In (21a), a carpenter can be either an apposition to John, the boyfriend of Mary or to the boyfriend of Mary alone. It is impossible to distinguish the two. Note that is also possible to get an apposition within an apposition, witness (21b): (21) a John, the boyfriend of Mary, a carpenter, is a linguistic celebrity. b John, the boyfriend of Mary, a nice girl, is a linguistic celebrity. Furthermore, in languages like German (Durrell, 1996: 42) in (22) and Czech (R. Simik, pc) in (23), the anchor and the apposition usually agree in case, just as first and second conjunct. Note that this observation can be used as an argument against an analysis of the appositional construction as a reduced relative clause. In that case, we would always expect nominative case (or default case; cf. Schütze, 2001). (22) a Es spricht Herbert Werner, der Vorsitzende des Vereins. it speaks Herbert Werner-nom, the chairman-nom the society-gen The speaker is Herbert Werner, the chairman of the society. b in Michelstadt, einem kleinen Städtchen im Odenwald in Michelstadt-dat, a little town-dat in the Odenwald-dat (23) Pan Novák nakreslil tuto místnost tužkou, svým oblíbeným Mr Novak drew this room-acc pencil-instr his favorite nástrojem instrument-instr Mr Novak drew this room with a pencil, his favourite instrument. Also, in languages like English (24) and Norwegian (25), pronouns in apposition and in the second conjunct of coordination (can) get default case: accusative, even in subject position (Schütze, 2001: 210, 214, 226, 227): (24) a The best athlete, her/*she, should win. b Did your parents or him/*he pick up Mary?

12 (25) a Ha nog meg var sammen om det. [Stavanger dialect] he-nom and me-acc were together about it He and I were in it together. (Johannesen 1998, citing Berntsen & Larsen 1925) b Laereren sa at den smarteste studenten, altså meg/jeg, the-teacher said that the smartest student, thus me-acc/i-nom, skulle gi en tale. should give a speech. The teacher said that the smartest student, namely me, should give a speech Differences There are also differences between coordination and appositional constructions, however. The most important difference is that second conjuncts do not show the same backgrounding in prosody and discourse as appositions. This backgrounding of appositions seems paratactical and is therefore discussed in section 3.2 below. Second, there is a difference in agreement with the verb. Conjunctions of singular subjects usually result in a plural verb, whereas appositional constructions with both anchor and apposition in singular form agree with a singular verb. This difference is not clear, however, since conjunction is the only type of coordination which shows agreement with both conjuncts. Disjunction does not. Furthermore, there are cases in languages like Arabic (cf. Aoun et al., 1999), but also sometimes in English, in which the verb only agrees with the first conjunct. The type of agreement of both coordination and apposition should be investigated in order to see whether it is possible that they work in the same way. Van Koppen & Rooryck (2006) argue that the agreement of coordination is not syntactic, but semantic. They suggest that features intersect only if they don t differ and use a default value for the other features. It would be interesting to see whether this approach is applicable to appositions too. Third, it is not clear whether the argument that anchor and apposition share their case is valid for all languages and even in the languages for which it is claimed, it seems not always to be true. For German, for example, an anchor in genitive or dative case often is followed by an apposition in nominative case (Engel, 1996: 807), especially if there is no definite article. Gallmann (1996) argues that these are examples of default case, like in English and Norwegian (see (21) and (22) above). (26) a einer alten Dame, letzte Bewohnerin dieses Hauses, an old lady-gen, last occupant-nom this house-gen, of an old lady, the last occupant of this house, b mit diesem durchtriebenen Aufschlag, die Spezialität des Schweden, with this sly service-dat, the specialty-nom the Swede-gen, with this sly service, the specialty of the Swede,

13 3.1.3 Specifying coordination Since there seem to be more resemblances than differences between apposition and coordination, it is reasonable to assume that apposition in fact is a subtype of coordination. An important question then is what this type of coordination expresses. In most cases, coordination reflects a parallel connection between two or more elements. Basically, there are two types of this connection: conjunction and disjunction. These can be represented by the logical operators AND ( or &) and OR ( ). Subtypes of the two, like adversative coordination, can be represented in the same way, if necessary in combination with the negation operator NOT ( ). Every coordinator can be described in this way (van der Heijden, 1999: 31). The type of coordination we are dealing with, however, can not be analysed as a subtype of conjunction or disjunction, because the connected items refer to the same element. De Vries (2006) uses the term specifying coordination. The apposition specifies the anchor by adding information to it. De Vries takes the specifying operator as a special type of conjunction and uses the symbol &: to show both conjunction and specification. Since specification is not a subtype of conjunction, however, and both coordinators of conjunction and disjunction appear in apposition markers, specification should just be taken as a third type of coordination and be described by the semicolon only. Zwart (2005) uses the term specifying coordination in a different context (V2- relatives). He suggests that this type of coordination is a non-parallel type. He refers to Kehler (2000), who distinguishes three types of coordination (or, in his words, coherence relations between clauses): parallel, narration and result. Zwart calls the last two types asymmetric and argues that specifying coordination is a third type of asymmetric coordination. These asymmetric types seem to correspond with the logical connective of implication (symbol, see also van der Heijden, 1999: 33). Kehler (2000: 548) shows that in non-parallel coordination VP-ellipsis is possible, even if there is no VP parallelism or syntactic reconstruction, in the case of (27) the elided VP is in active voice, whereas the source was in passive: (27) In March, four fireworks manufacturers asked that the decision be reversed, and on Monday the ICC did [reverse the decision]. Zwart (2005: 69) argues that this kind of ellipsis is also possible in a specifying sentence, like (28): (28) It seems that Fermat s last theorem has finally been proved. To be precise, Andrew Wiles did [prove it]. Zwart states that specifying coordination is something similar, but with specifications for a noun instead of a CP. He uses the term specifying coordination for so-called V2- relatives in Dutch (and German, see Gärtner, 2001): relative clauses with verb second, a word order that is normally used in main clauses only

14 (29) Ik ken iemand die vindt disco leuk. I know someone that-dem finds disco nice. I know someone who likes disco. Zwart (p. 69/70) also relates V2-relatives to asymmetric coordination because of the possibility to associate the element zelfs in the first conjunct with a focused item in the second conjunct. In parallel coordination, this association is impossible. (30) a Ik ken zelfs iemand die vindt DISCO leuk. I know even someone that finds disco nice. I know someone who even likes disco. b Jan pakte zelfs de krant en ging zitten LEZEN. Jan took even the paper and went to sit to read. Jan took the paper and sat down to even read. c * Jan is zelfs getrouwd en werkt in de HORECA. Jan is even married and works in the hotel and catering industry. Jan is married and has a job even in the hotel and catering industry. It is interesting that these V2-relatives are called specifying coordination too and a reason to find out how much this construction and the appositional construction have in common. In section 3.3 this issue will be raised again Structural consequences Assuming that apposition indeed can be analysed as coordination, it is important to see which consequences this has for its syntactical structure. In most of the current literature it is assumed that the structure of coordination is a phrase with the coordinator as head: CoP or &P. We could use this for appositions too, taking the apposition marker as head and projecting this to an apposition phrase: AppP or :P. The specifier is then filled by the anchor and the complement by the apposition. This structure implies that the apposition marker and the apposition form one constituent. This seems to go with the data and for now I assume that this structure is correct. Figure 1 Coordination and Apposition phrases 3.2 Apposition and parataxis As stated above, apposition has been analysed as specifying coordination, a term that Zwart (2005) uses for V2-relatives. Interestingly, Zwart describes V2-relatives as paratactic, just as de Vries (to appear a) does for appositional constructions. Therefore, it seems reasonable to investigate whether the appositional construction indeed can be analysed as a paratactic construction

15 3.2.1 Prosodic and discourse backgrounding A first thing to note in this respect is that an apposition is separated from the matrix sentence prosodically. The intonation shows a so-called parenthetical dip (see Schelfhout et al., to appear) between the apposition and the anchor. This implies that the appositional construction is part of a larger class of parenthetical constructions, like interjections, transparent free relatives and reporting clauses and indeed may belong to the still broader class of parataxis (cf. de Vries, to appear b). In this respect it is also relevant to have a look at the discourse of appositional constructions. This shows that appositions express a proposition of their own, separate from the proposition of the whole sentence (Corazza, 2005: 6). The truth value of this background proposition does not affect the truth value of the official proposition of the whole utterance. (31) a Jane, my best student, graduated with a distinction. b Jane graduated with a distinction. (official proposition) c Jane is the speaker s best student. (background proposition) Even if (31c) is not true, (31b), and therefore (31a) can be true. The background proposition, or conventional implicature (Potts, 2005: 14), is invariably speaker-oriented. In embedded sentences like (14), the background proposition is outside the scope of the verb in the main clause. This example does not say anything about Sheila s believe with regard to Chuck being a psychopath. (32) Sheila believes that Chuck, a psychopath, is fit to watch the kids. Apposition seems less integrated in the matrix sentence than coordination, therefore. Contrary to the apposition, the second conjunct is in the scope of a plug, a verb of saying, in the main clause, for example. Compare (32) above to (33) from Potts (2005: 4): (33) Sheila says that Chuck is fit to watch the kids and that Chuck is a confirmed psychopath. Moreover, the apposition and the matrix sentence can differ in illocutionary force and mood. In (34a), the matrix sentence is interrogative. The apposition is not a part of the question, however, it is in fact a statement, that John is the linguistic celebrity. In (34b), the apposition is not in the scope of a modal adverb. The apposition gives the information that Mary is John s girl friend as a fact, whereas the matrix sentence is only probably true, because of the adverb. (34) a Did John, the linguistic celebrity, kiss Mary? b John probably thought that Mary, his girl friend, would kiss him. A syntactic structure of these constructions should account for the backgrounding of these appositional propositions, both in discourse and prosody, which seems to be paratactic

16 3.2.2 Is coordination parataxis? In order to do investigate in more detail whether appositions are paratactical, the criteria of Espinal (1991) for parataxis, in her words parenthetical or disjunct constituents, are used. For some of these criteria, namely the lack of c-command (tested by principle C), the scope of quantifiers, negation and other propositional operators and multiplicity, it is already shown in section 3.1 that they are satisfied by appositions, because they are satisfied by coordination. Maybe, then, coordination is parataxis too, as suggested by de Vries (2006) Other features of parataxis In a footnote, Espinal herself states that (nominal) appositions are no disjunct constituents, because they can be the focus in cleft sentences, they can be questioned and they can substitute some valence requirement of the verb in the matrix sentence. According to her, nominal apposition (the only type of apposition she takes into account) should be analysed as adjunction to the NP or DP. I think, however, that appositions cannot be the focus of a cleft sentence and therefore they cannot be questioned either. Consider her own example (p. 746). The apposition is not grammatical as the focus of a cleft sentence here. (35) a The Gulf War, the mother of all wars, is going to be devastating for many people. b * It is the mother of all wars that the Gulf War _ is going to be devastating for many people. c It is the Gulf War, the mother of all wars, that is going to be devastating for many people. Note that it is possible to get the apposition in the focus of a cleft sentence if it is put there together with the anchor, as in (35c). This only shows, however, that appositions really can occur in every position in the sentence, even if the anchor is in the focus of a cleft sentence. Of course, unlike most paratactic constructions, the apposition functions in a way as an argument of the verb in the host clause. This argument position is filled twice, however. That is something which Espinal considers impossible for non-paratactic structures in her description of the multiplicity of paratactic structures. Intuitively, it is the anchor that really fills the argument position and the apposition is just a specification to the anchor. Besides, if just one criterion fails, this is not enough to argue that appositions are not paratactic. Therefore, we should check the other criteria. Comma-intonation and being speaker-oriented have been mentioned in section already. Another feature, the possibility of combining different tenses in disjuncts and the host clause is in a way possible for appositions too. Though it is not really possible to speak about tense, since there is no overt verb in the apposition, it is possible to use temporal adverbs showing that there is a difference in time between the host sentence and the apposition. This is already pointed out by Klein (1977: 54) for appositions, in Dutch:

17 (36) a Willem, eens een alcoholist, is nu een hasj-gebruiker. Willem, once an alcoholic, is now a hashish user. b Willem, volgend jaar vermoedelijk mijn collega, is gisteren getrouwd. Willem, next year presumably my colleague, is yesterday married. Also, it is possible to add or delete constituents in either the host or disjunct structure, without affecting the grammaticality or meaning of the rest of the syntactic structure (37) a The mechanic, an excellent person, hasn t repaired the car yet. b The mechanic, who incidentally is an excellent person, hasn t repaired the car yet. c The mechanic, an excellent person, hasn t repaired the car of my parents yet. Furthermore, the verb in Dutch and German does not need to be in the second position if an apposition is used, see (36) above. Note that this argument is not very clear. If anchor and apposition are analysed as one constituent, thus filling only one position, the verb is in the second. Also, appositions can be inserted in wh-islands which are immune to extraction: (38) a John knows the man who kissed Mary, the famous linguist, yesterday. b * Who does John know the man who kissed _? Structural consequences The other criteria Espinal (1999) uses, are just not applicable to appositions, but since all criteria argue in favour of parataxis, as shown above, I think it is fair to conclude that appositions indeed are paratactic. The question now is how this should be represented in syntactic theory. Espinal (1991) already argues that these constructions are not a part of the sentential structure and should therefore be represented in a different dimension. She proposes multiple root nodes which intersect in some way at the terminal level. The root of a paratactic structure can be the maximal projection of a head of any syntactic category. In John, a guy, kisses Mary there would be two root structures: the CP John kisses Mary and the DP a guy. The linearization of the two is done on PF. Of course, this type of analysis clearly shows that the apposition is in some ways independent from the host clause and lacks c-command etcetera. However, it does not show how the apposition is related to the anchor and why they have to be adjacent. Now, if we use this type of analysis to show the partly independency and combine this with the idea that anchor and apposition are related in coordination, we get an analysis like de Vries (2006), in which the paratactic construction is represented behind its anchor, in a different dimension, explaining amongst other things invisibility for c-command, but is still related to it in a CoP-like structure

18 AppP AppMarker Apposition Anchor App 3.3 Apposition and predication In section 2.2 it was shown that appositions have some features which can be used as arguments for an analysis as predication. Since it is not clear that these features really imply a sentential structure for appositions, however, let us consider another argument here. In order to do that, I come back to the relation with V2-relatives as described in section V2-relatives revisited The first thing to note in a comparison between V2-relatives and appositions is that some of the apposition markers in Dutch, like dat wil zeggen, lit. that wants to say, and dat is, that is, show verb second as well. This can be used as an argument that appositions are not like reduced relatives at all, but are just main clauses, somehow coordinated with the matrix sentence. However striking the resemblance with V2-relatives is, it is also clear that there are some important differences between V2-relatives and appositions. First of all V2- relatives are restrictive, whereas appositions are non-restrictive. In contrast with appositions, the intonation pattern of V2-relatives is integrated in the matrix clause. Furthermore, the position of V2-relatives is always in sentence-final position, while appositional constructions appear in all possible positions in the sentence. To me, however, it seems that there is something like a non-restrictive V-2 relative, which indeed is very similar to appositions. (39) a Piet, (en)die is niet dom, begreep het verslag niet. Piet, and that-dem is not stupid, understood the report not. Piet, and he is not stupid, didn t understand the report. b Piet, niet dom, begreep het verslag niet. Piet, not stupid, understood the report not. Piet, not stupid, didn t understand the report. If the nominal part of the predicate in this construction consists of a DP instead of an AP, the expletive dat, that is used instead of the demonstrative die, that. In that case, the construction is indistinguishable from the apposition with the marker dat is, that is:

19 (40) a Piet, (en) dat is een aardige jongen, gaf Marie een bos bloemen. Piet, and that-expl is a nice boy, gave Mary a bunch flowers. Piet, and he is/that is a nice boy, gave Mary a bunch of flowers. b Piet, (en) dat is de buurman, is ziek. Piet, and that-expl is the neighbour, is ill. Piet, that is/and he is the neighbour, is ill. Though this construction is not a normal relative clause, and therefore the resemblance with appositions does not support the analysis of appositions as reduced relative clauses, it does support the relation between predication and apposition. Note that the similarity with this construction could also be used as an argument that dat is, that is and some similar expressions like dat wil zeggen, that is to say, do not function as apposition markers, because they can co-occur with the coordinator en, and. This would mean that not all expressions called apposition markers so far have to be in the head of AppP, but that some of them get a position within the apposition Structural consequences Assuming that the conclusions in the last section are on the right track, this means that the apposition is a CP expressing predication, whereas the apposition marker, the head of the AppP, is not, because the markers that were considered sentence-like before can be combined with a coordinator and thus seem to be no markers at all. This results in the following structure: CP AppP AppMarker CP TP DP App (and) The author of this report (that is) me drew a tree. 4 Some other questions Above, I investigated the structure of appositions and of the appositional constructions in which they appear. Here, I present some questions related to appositions, but not really important for their syntactic structure: the possibility of extraposition and the difference between appositions and so-called anaphoric epithets

20 4.1 Extraposition The first question is about the possibility of appositions to appear in the right periphery of the matrix sentence, even if the anchor is in its normal position in the sentence. Traditionally, this is analysed as extraposition: movement of the apposition to the right. Following the LCA of Kayne (1994) however, it is assumed that movement to the right is impossible. This means that there are two options. Either the anchor and the apposition are generated at the right of the host sentence together, and the anchor is moved to the left, or only the apposition is generated at the right side of the host sentence in the basis. Most often this last option is assumed to be the right one. This raises new questions about the relation between the anchor and the apposition, however. If they are generated separately, how are they related? In this respect, it is interesting to have a look at the analysis of Koster (2000) for cases of extraposition in general. He assumes that this is a parallel construal, meaning something coordination-like. He even uses the term specification in this respect. It would be very interesting, therefore, to see whether his analysis can be used to analyse appositions and their possibility of extraposition at once. Maybe the possibility of extraposition follows directly from the normal features of appositions in this way. 4.2 Epithets versus appositions Another interesting question related to appositions is raised by Klein (1977). In a rather long footnote, he points out that appositions in some contexts look like anaphoric epithets. These are constituents referring to a concept that has been introduced before, but in a new way. This means that, besides just referring, these words indirectly add some new information. In (41) the epithet the idiot refers to John and expresses that either John s father or the speaker thinks that John is an idiot because he missed the train. (41) John i s father said that [the idiot] i missed the train. Epithets have been investigated because they behave in a special way as anaphors. Here, however, it is more important that they look like appositions sometimes. Here are some examples from Corazza (2005: 4): (42) a Jon, the fool, missed the train. b You, the sweetheart, insulted the dean. c Bush, the illiterate warmonger, invaded Iraq. Klein (1977: 114, 115) notes some interesting differences with appositions, however. First, epithets can occur easily in sentence final position, whereas for appositions there are restrictions on this possibility. The examples are in Dutch: (43) a Paul, de koning van Griekenland, trouwde een ware Xantippe. Paul the king of Greece married a true Xantippe. b Paul, de stommeling, trouwde een ware Xantippe