Hi,

How to find out that any noun phrase is either appositive or absolute phrase if in a sentence:

1. Both of them are used in between the sentence with paired ","
2. Both of them are placed next to another noun.

If possible kindly explain thru the examples below:

1. Guillermo, his arm in pain, Guillermo strode out of the building. (Little modified exp of absolute phrase of MGMAT SC 4th edition, pg number. 291 )
2. The coach, an old classmate of mine, was not pleased. (exp of appositive of MGMAT SC 4th edition, pg number 292)

Thank you.

This is from my notes (which i made reading somewhere on net) :

Appositives rename noun phrases and are usually placed beside what they rename .
The following example shows a noun phrase in apposition to another:
The lady, our president, spoke out against racism.

"Our president" renames the subject "the lady" and so is
in apposition to it.

Absolute phrases are made of nouns or pronouns followed by a participle and any modifiers of the noun or pronoun. Absolute phrases contain a subject (unlike participial phrases), and no predicate. They serve to modify an entire sentence : A group of words that modifies an independent clause as a whole.

Joan looked nervous, her fears creeping up on her.
noun/subject: her fears
participle: creeping
modifier: up on her
absolute phrase: her fears creeping up on her

Tom paled when he came home, his mother standing in the
doorway.
noun/subject: his mother
participle: standing
modifier: in the doorway
absolute phrase: his mother standing in the doorway


I am sure, you can now answer your question yourself.

Thanks

You need to use meaning to distinguish between appositives and absolute phrases. Since absolute phrases are modifiers, they will usually contain a different kind of information than an appositive. In sentence 1, "his arm in pain" modifies Guillermo. It wouldn't make sense to say that Guillermo and "his arm in pain" are the same thing. (Note also that the sentence begins with "His arm." It would not be correct to place the name Guillermo both before and after the phrase.)

In the appositive example, the coach is also an old classmate. Since it makes sense for a coach to be the same as an old classmate, we can see that this is an appositive.

The second example of an absolute phrase ("The car fell into the lake, the cold water filling the compartment.") is a bit more tricky. It is possible for "the lake" and "the cold water filling the compartment" to be the same thing, so we could interpret this as an appositive. However, since a lake is something everyone should be familiar with, it makes more sense to read this as an absolute phrase. The second portion of the sentence does not modify the word "lake," but rather describes the result of the event mentioned in the first half of the sentence.

To sum up, you know you are dealing with an appositive when it seems logical to think of the two adjacent nouns as identical. If the noun in the modifying phrase is *doing* something ("He stepped out of the car, his leg bleeding badly."), you are probably dealing with an absolute phrase.

_________________
Dmitry Farber
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

Thanks a lot dmitryknowbest and anshu.

Regards,
Kapil

Thank you to all.

_________________
Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor