Yesterday, we were checking our papers from the Midterm Exams for Structure of English. The first part of the examination was determining the nouns and identifying its function in the sentence. We came across this sentence:
"The college of cardinals, Teresa, is the senate of the pope."
The nouns in the sentence are "college of cardinal", "Teresa", "senate of the pope" or "senate" and "pope". "College of cardinals" is the subject of the sentence. "Senate of the pope" is a subjective complement because it completes the thought of the subject. We can also have "pope" as the object of the preposition because it precedes the word "of". What I did was identify "Teresa" as an appositive. Out teacher said it is an appositive but I have to indicate what noun it renames.
For a short review...
An appositive is a noun or pronoun that renames another noun. An appositive is usually placed next to the noun it renames.
However, upon reviewing the sentence, "Teresa" does not fit the description of an appositive. Ma'am P said "Teresa" is an appositive of the "senate of the pope" which is the subjective complement. Although appositives could be placed just about anywhere in the sentence, I still find this confusing. It was not clear that "Teresa" points out to "senate of the pope". The placement was confusing. It does not just confuse those studying its structure but even those who simply read it.
I still maintain that there is something wrong with the sentence.
No comments:
Post a Comment