I think the clause in the second sentence *is* an appositive. When I ask
myself "What is the fact?" I answer, "That they didn't like chocolate."
Couldn't we write "That they didn't like chocolate surprised her"? It looks
like a nominal clause to me.
Also, because the clause in the first sentence is essential/restrictive,
wouldn't we omit the commas? I know that the "which/that" distinction is
falling by the wayside, slowly but surely; however, I still teach my
students to omit the commas when the clause is essential (as it is in
sentence 1).
I'm on spring break, so maybe my brain is on vacation . . . .
Nancy
Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
Professor of English
Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program
Columbia College
Columbia, South Carolina
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803-786-3706
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Beth Young
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 8:21 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: appositive vs relative clause
I discovered today that my students are having trouble distinguishing
between appositives and relative clauses, and I didn't have any clever
explanation ready to hand.
Here are a couple of example sentences with the suspected appositives
in brackets:
1. The book, [that was titled 'Great Expectations',] was a classic.
2. The fact [that they didn't like chocolate] surprised her.
I explained that appositives are completely interchangeable with the
noun they are renaming, so that you could have all of the following
permutations:
A, B, was a classic.
B, A, was a classic.
A was a classic.
B was a classic.
That explanation cleared up sentence 1. But when we got to sentence 2,
the students interpreted "That they didn't like chocolate" as a nominal
clause and felt that the interchangeable-ness worked.
I wanted a way to explain the difference that didn't rely on pitting my
grammatical sense against theirs. I pointed out that there were no
commas in sentence 2; they replied, "But what if we put commas in--does
that make it an appositive"? And of course they will find
nonrestrictive relative clauses set off with commas, and who knows,
perhaps some of those relative clauses might work as nominal clauses
too.
I told them that nouns and appositives were usually parallel in form,
and that if they COULD interpret something as a relative clause, they
SHOULD. I don't think they were terribly enthusiastic about that
explanation.
Am I missing something obvious in my mid-semester tiredness? How do
you explain the difference?
Beth
Beth Rapp Young
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~byoung
University of Central Florida
From Promise to Prominence: Celebrating 40 Years.
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