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Friends, Romans, countrymen: it is time to learn about appositive phrases!\u00a0 But first, a practice sentence.<\/p>\nFriends, Romans, countrymen: it is time to learn about appositive phrases!\u00a0 But first, a practice sentence.<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0Being 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
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 would be to tell what it is.\u00a0 An appositive is a second noun which follows a first noun and is identical to the first noun.\u00a0 When this second noun is modified by adjective and possibly even modifying subordinate clauses, it becomes an appositive phrase.\u00a0 Sometimes, the phrase is use rhetorically, as Mark Antony used it at the opening of Julius Caesar's funeral oration in Shakespeare's\u00a0play<\/a>, quote above, but rhetorical 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)\u00a0Claude Debussy<\/a>, a great French composer, \u2026.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0Rhodesia<\/a>, the region that eventually became\u00a0Zimbabwe<\/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 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\u00a0vital modifiers<\/a>, a.k.a. essential modifiers, a.k.a.\u00a0restrictive modifiers<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 When the modifier (appositive or other kind of modifier) is purely descriptive, and not necessarily to establish the identity of the noun, it is non-vital, non-essential modifier, and these are\u00a0ALWAYS 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 read 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\u00a0Chris<\/a>\u00a0enjoys 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 make is a vital modifier.\u00a0 Vital modifiers are\u00a0NEVER separated by commas<\/strong>\u00a0from 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 a 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\"\u00a0 ---- 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 informative.\u00a0\u00a0 This would be the situation of most ordinary married people --- people who are married to\u00a0only one<\/em>\u00a0married partner!<\/p>\n By contrast, the second doesn't have commas, which implies the name is a vital modifier!\u00a0 In other words, apparently for that person, the words \"my wife\" do not determine a unique individual, because that person has multiple wives, and therefore he has to specify the name to pick out 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\u00a0something<\/a>\u00a0that 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 1) There are several important splits.\u00a0 First let's talk about the \"little\" vs. \"few<\/a>\" split.\u00a0 Natural predators is something 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\u00a0(B)\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0(E)<\/strong>\u00a0is 100% correct, the phrase \"little natural predators\" in\u00a0(A)<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0(C)<\/strong>\u00a0is completely wrong, and the phrase \"a very small number of natural predators\" in\u00a0(D)<\/strong>\u00a0is 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\u00a0(B)<\/strong>\u00a0and \"but\" in\u00a0(C)<\/strong>\u00a0&\u00a0(D)<\/strong>\u00a0provide this strong contrast, whereas the \"and\" of\u00a0(A)<\/strong>\u00a0and the \"as\" of\u00a0(E)<\/strong>\u00a0are insufficient.<\/p>\n Now, let's look at the handling of the appositive.\u00a0 Choices\u00a0(B)<\/strong>\u00a0&\u00a0(D)<\/strong>\u00a0have the proper appositive construction --- they name the \"Bald Eagle\", and then a comma for the non-vital appositive description \"America's national bird.\"\u00a0\u00a0(C)<\/strong>, through a misplaced modifier, attributes the status of national bird to the wrong bird.\u00a0\u00a0(A)<\/strong>\u00a0has an awkward \"being\" construction, and\u00a0(E)<\/strong>\u00a0constructs a longer, more awkward phrase.\u00a0\u00a0 Clearly, the appositive structure of\u00a0(B)<\/strong>\u00a0&\u00a0(D)<\/strong>\u00a0is 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\u00a0(B)<\/strong>\u00a0has a genuine verb, \"dwindled.\"<\/p>\n That's more than enough to isolate\u00a0(B)<\/strong>\u00a0as the best answer.<\/p>\n This post was written by Mike McGarry, GMAT expert at Magoosh<\/a>, and originally posted here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Friends, Romans, countrymen: it is time to learn about appositive phrases!\u00a0 But first, a practice sentence. 1.\u00a0Being America’s national bird, the Bald Eagle has little natural predators like the Great…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,783,243,719,735],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat","category-magoosh-blog","category-blog","category-sentence-correction-gmat","category-verbal-gmat-blog","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15650,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15647\/revisions\/15650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Punctuation: the weight of a comma<\/h2>\n
Practice question explanation<\/h2>\n