Notes on Reformulative Nominal Appositions in English: Toward a Hybrid Analysis

Abstract

This paper investigates reformulative nominal appositions in English. Recently, two competing analyses have been proposed. The coordination analysis argues that the anchor and the apposition are coordinated (Griffiths 2015a,b), whereas the ellipsis analysis argues that the apposition is generated within an independent root clause and is interpolated into the host after application of ellipsis (Ott 2016). In this paper, carefully examining the relevant arguments, we claim that each analysis needs to be adopted on independent grounds, and thus both analyses are operable in dealing with wide range of data.