Close-Appositiona fictional corpus-based study

Abstract

The present paper first defines the notion of the so-called close apposition and then provides a revision of those structures that Meyer (1989) considers appositional as well as a special type of relationship held by units other than NPs, which is not mentioned by this scholar. The aim here is to analyze the formal, syntantic, semantic and pragmatic, characteristics of restrictive apposition, and for this purpose, a novel, representative of fictional style, has been selected. The analysis of the data reveals that all the examples classified as close apposition, together with all the patterns that Meyer proposes, are clear cases of premodification, complementation and post-modification so that it is difficult, not to say impossible, to speak of close apposition at least to refer to the structures mentioned by Meyer.