By taking Quirk et al’s (1985) requirements for the so-called “strict
full apposition” –possibility of omission of the members, coreferentiality,
formal identity and functional unity– as the point of departure, we
enumerate the different problems faced when one attempts to give a
definition and classification of appositions in English, from both a syntactic
and a semantic point of view.
Once we agree with the fact that appositions are primarily pragmatic
phenomena by means of which we expand that piece of information
assigned to a previous part of the speech according to the speaker
and/or hearer’s needs, we are then able to answer the problems put forward
by the relevant literature and to suggest a suitable analysis.
