The proper usage of correlative conjunctions and appositives

[Mwita Chacha]

I hate to be a spoilsport, but I think there's a serious parallelism flaw in the sentence ''Your colleague is either kidding you, or he or she is a superwriter from another planet.'' A parallelism rule governing the usage of correlative conjunctions demands that the elements being connected be similar both in their length and in their grammatical form (as I have connected two well-balanced prepositional phrases using 'both...and' here). It's a fact that ''kidding'' is not only obviously very short in comparison to ''he or she is a superwriter from another planet'' but also entirely different in grammatical form from it. I'd have written the sentence as ''Either your colleague is kidding you or he or she is a superwriter from another planet. Here 'either...or' has perfectly connected two balanced clauses.

Another disturbing thing: The comma next to proper noun ''Mwita Chacha'' in this first sentence of this week's column topic has rendered the construction subjectless: ''A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo's English Forum, Mwita Chacha, recently related this very curious incident about...'' In this sentence, ''Mwita Chacha'' has been made to act as an appositive renaming ''A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo's English Forum,'' which shouldn't have been the case. My proposed revision: ''A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo's English Forum, Mwita Chacha recently related this very curious incident about...'' or ''Mwita Chacha, a Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo's English Forum, recently related this very curious incident about...'' Now our sentence has its subject in the right place.

[Joe Carillo]

Here's my reply to your posting challenging the grammatical validity of two of my sentence constructions:

On the usage of the correlative conjunction “either…or…”:

You think that there’s a serious parallelism flaw in this sentence from a recent posting of mine, “Your colleague is either kidding you, or he or she is a superwriter from another planet.” You made this conclusion based on your understanding that “the usage of correlative conjunctions demands that the elements being connected be similar both in their length and in their grammatical form.”

I must say at the very outset that my usage of the correlative conjunction “either…or…” in that sentence is grammatically faultless. On the contrary, the serious flaw is in your own contention about the proper use of correlative conjunctions. That serious flaw is that although it is indeed a must for the elements linked by a correlative conjunction to be similar in grammatical form and to be constructed in parallel, it is definitely wrong to say that these elements (1) should be similar in length, and (2) should be perfectly balanced.  

Proposition 1. That elements linked by a correlative conjunction should be similar or about equal in length. That this proposition is absurd can readily be demonstrated by the following sentences using the correlative conjunction “either…or…”:

1. “We can either start cooking now so the kids can have dinner before going to sleep, or eat at that Chinese restaurant.”

(Here, the first grammatical element, “start cooking now so the kids can have dinner before going to sleep,” consists of 13 words, while the second element, “eat at that Chinese restaurant,” consists of only 5 words.)

2. “Give her either five days or as long as necessary to exhaust her accumulated leaves.”

(Here, the first element, “five days,” is only 2 words long, while the second element, “as long as necessary to exhaust her accumulated leaves,” is 9 words long.)

Clearly then, the similarity or equality of length of the elements linked by the correlative conjunction “either…or…” isn’t a valid requirement for its correct usage.

Proposition 2. That elements linked by a correlative conjunction should be perfectly balanced. That this proposition is indefensible can readily be demonstrated by the following sentence using the correlative conjunction “either…or…”:

“Our travel destination this summer? It’s either Europe—or bust!

(Here, there’s absolutely no balance or attempt to balance in the elements linked by the correlative conjunction “either…or…” The word “Europe” is a noun, while “bust” is an adjective in the sense of “bankrupt” or “broke.”)

The most that can validly be said about the elements connected by correlative conjunctions, particularly “either…or…”, is that they should be of equal grammatical weight and are usually parallel. Equal grammatical weight means that the two clauses are relatively equal in grammatical importance, not equal in length as you argued in your critique against my sentence. Unfortunately, many grammarians or grammar commentators on the web wrongly restate the “equal in importance” idea as “equal in length,” thus making a lot of learners of the English language acquire a false notion about correct correlative conjunction usage. It’s not too late for you and others who similarly subscribe to this false notion to unlearn it.

As to parallelism, yes, it’s definitely desirable for elements linked by the correlative conjunction “either…or…” to be constructed in parallel. By definition, a correlative conjunction is a paired conjunction that links balanced words, phrases, and clauses, but it needs to be emphasized here that “balanced,” as I have explained above, means that they are of equal grammatical weight—meaning that they are of equal grammatical importance and not necessarily equal in length—and are constructed in parallel.

It is in this context that I think this sentence from a recent posting of mine is beyond grammatical reproach: “Your colleague is either kidding you, or he or she is a superwriter from another planet.” Your proposed alternative construction, “Either your colleague is kidding you or he or she is a superwriter from another planet,” is also grammatically correct, but frankly, I can’t see why you think this particular construction of yours “has perfectly connected two balanced clauses” any better than mine.

On appositives and appositive phrases:

A misunderstanding of what appositives and appositive phrases do is clearly the reason why you think this sentence construction of mine doesn’t have a subject: “A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum, Mwita Chacha, recently related this very curious incident about the use of position titles.” You think that this sentence construction has been rendered subjectless by the comma that comes next to the proper noun “Mwita Chacha,” and that it is grammatically wrong to make that proper noun function as an appositive that renames “a Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo's English Forum.”  

Let’s first go back to the basics by going to the definition of an appositive. An appositive is a word or word group that defines or further identifies the noun or noun phrase preceding it. For instance, in the sentence “Edward, a computer whiz, wants to sell his unique street-mapping program to Microsoft,” the word group “the computer whiz” is the appositive and it serves to further identify the proper noun “Edward.” On the other hand, an appositive phrase is a group of words along with its associated modifiers that renames, re-identifies, or amplifies the word that preceded the phrase. For instance, in the sentence “Edward, a computer whiz who wants to sell his unique street-mapping program to Microsoft, got a handsome offer from the company yesterday,” the appositive phrase “the computer whiz who wants to sell his unique street-mapping program to Microsoft” amplifies the proper noun “Edward.”

And then there are two kinds of appositives—the essential or restrictive appositive and the nonessential or nonrestrictive appositive.

An essential or restrictive appositive narrows the meaning of the word it modifies and is necessary to clarify the meaning of the sentence. This kind of appositive is usually a single word or a set of words closely related to the preceding word, and does not require commas to set it off from the rest of the sentence, as in this example: “The American actor Robert Downey Jr. has made the comics character Iron Man one of the world’s most lucrative movie franchises.” Without “Robert Downey Jr.” as restrictive appositive (meaning one not set off by commas), we won't know the identity of the actor being talked about.

On the other hand, a nonessential or nonrestrictive appositive is not absolutely necessary to the meaning of a sentence; it may be omitted without altering the basic meaning. As such, it must be set off from the rest of the sentence by one or two commas, depending on its position in the sentence, as in these examples: “Albert’s brother, a Philippine-educated information technology specialist, works with Boeing in the United States.” “A Philippine-educated information technology specialist, Albert’s brother works with Boeing in the United States.”

Now, let’s examine my sentence construction that you found disturbing because you mistakenly thought it was subjectless: “A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum, Mwita Chacha, recently related this very curious incident about the use of position titles.” What we have here is actually a sentence with a nonessential or nonrestrictive appositive, “Mwita Chacha.” It is nonessential in the sense that the sentence can stand on its own and be meaningful without that appositive, as we can see in this reconstruction of that sentence: “A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum recently related this very curious incident about the use of position titles.” Clearly, contrary to what you think, the sentence still has a grammatically valid and properly functioning subject—the noun phrase “A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum.” This noun phrase provides sufficient identification on its own, even without the proper name “Mwita Chacha,” and it is for this reason that I used commas to set this proper name off when I decided to use it as an appositive after the noun phrase that serves as the subject of the sentence: “A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum, Mwita Chacha, recently related this very curious incident about the use of position titles.”

We must keep in mind, though, that my use of “Mwita Chacha” as an appositive was a subjective decision—a conscious choice of point of view—that’s called for by journalistic writing, where readers generally wouldn’t know the subject by name at first mention—unless, of course, he or she has already become famous or notorious enough to be immediately recognized by that name. In that case, I could have used “Mwita Chacha” as the subject and “a Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum” as an appositive phrase, as in this sentence that you proposed: “Mwita Chacha, a Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum, recently related this very curious incident about the use of position titles.” I think you’ll agree with me that neither fame nor notoriety isn’t obtaining yet in the case of the proper noun “Mwita Chacha,” so I thought it prudent to use that name in that sentence in the role of an appositive instead: “A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum, Mwita Chacha, recently related this very curious incident about the use of position titles.”

I hope I have adequately clarified the grammatical basis for my two sentence constructions that you challenged in your posting.

P.S. And by the way, this first proposed revision of yours to the second sentence that you questioned is grammatically unacceptable: “A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum, Mwita Chacha recently related this very curious incident about...” It’s a dysfunctional construction that can be remedied by putting a comma after “Mwita Chacha,” which, of course, will make the name an appositive. Another way is to recast the phrase “a Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum” into a verbal phrase so it can do its modification task properly, as in this construction: “Writing to Jose Carillo’s English Forum from Tanzania, Mwita Chacha recently related this very curious incident about...” But then that’s another complex aspect of English grammar that I think we can discuss at length some other time…

FURTHER READINGS ON APPOSITIVES:
How appositives can give life and texture to writing
A unified approach to the proper use of punctuation in English - Part I

[Mwita Chacha]

A classmate of mine, who lived in England as a child, used adverb ''presently'' in place of ''currently'' in a speech at a welcome-first-year party. I later texted him to inform him that the words were not one and the same. His response: ''There's no problem using ''presently'' and ''currently'' interchangeably. London speakers do the same thing.''
I fail to understand why you think the person who made the sentence ''It's either Europe--or bust!'' is so grammar-savvy that he or she never commits blunders. I am also keen to learn what makes you think you can defend the validity of your sentence by relying on that one sentence made by a person whose level of grammar understanding is only known to nobody except you. You've decidedly made a fallacious argument if this is what you're indirectly telling me: ''There's problem breaking the rule. Even this person violates it.'' Having not lost my confidence in your ability to solve various grammar problems for English users, I suspect such inefficient response is a result of failure to give the matter the required weight, and I very much hope you'll find time to look at it more seriously and come up with something logical and substantive for the benefit of not only myself but also all Forum members. I would be grateful if you would bring up sentences that use correlative conjunctions to join  pairs of unrelated grammar elements by other grammar-competent writers, though I am aware of how impossible it is to achieve that.
With respect to appositives, let me pick up on your own definition: ''An appositive is a word or word group that defined or further identifies the noun or noun phrase preceding it.'' Controlling words here are ''define'' and ''identify.'' The main responsibility an appositive in a sentence is to define or identify, and it's a common sense that the writer shouldn't expect that job to be carried out by words that are unfamiliar to readers. If you look carefully and the sentence ''A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo's English Forum, Mwita Chacha, recently related this very curious incident about...,'' you will dicover that ''Mwita Chacha'' is less suitable as an appositive than ''A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo's English Forum. Many newspaper readers in The Phillipines, where Manila Times is published and widely sold, might have heard about the existence of ''Jose Carillo's Forum'' and even have been members of it, but surely none of them is aware of an individual in this globe who goes by the name ''Mwita Chacha.''
But you've also stated that my revision sentence ''A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo's English Forum, Mwita Chacha recently related this very curious incident about...'' is grammatically faulty. Your argument appears to be grounded on the wrong idea that appositives can't introduce sentences. That you're making such an assertion is highly shocking, because below are some of the sentences marked by appositives followed by subjects without commas next to them:
(1) A fine man, my husband tolerates my grammatical tirades.
(2) A vocational counselor, John Smith has agreed to help me get a job.
(3) An expert in organ-transplant procedures, the chief surgeon took her nephew on a hospital tour.
(4) A bold innovator, Wassily Kandinsky is known for his colorful abstract paintings.
(5) The popular US president, John Kennedy was known for his eloquent and inspirational speeches.
(6) A sporty red convertible with bucket seats, my brother's car is the envy of my friends,
(7) A grey-haired convict in the white uniform of the prison, the hangman was waiting beside his machine.
You see, knowing grammar rules is one thing but applying them correctly is an altogether different activity. In my experience, grammar rules are most of the time breached by people who are expected to be knowing them very well.

[Joe Carillo]

Regarding your rejoinder above:

1. On your demand for more proof to disprove your claim that elements linked by a correlative conjunction should be perfectly balanced

As you requested, below for your appreciation are four more sentences that demonstrate the grammatical indefensibility of your claim that elements linked by a correlative conjunction should be perfectly balanced:

(1) “Either stay or you can say goodbye forever to your freebies that you enjoy so much.”
     No balance between “stay” and “can say goodbye forever to your freebies that you enjoy so much”

(2) “You either confess now or back to the penitentiary you go and rot there for the rest of your life.”
     No balance between “confess now” and “back to the penitentiary you go and rot there for the rest of  
     your life”

(3) “What can I say about the missing bank robbers? Well, they are either dead now or gallivanting with their loot in Europe.”
     No balance between “dead now” and “gallivanting with their loot in Europe.”

(4) “By leaving this much evidence against them, either those counterfeiters are dumb or they are supremely confident that the police authorities neither have the will nor energy to go after them.”
     No balance between “dumb” and “they are supremely confident that the police authorities neither have  
     the will nor energy to go after them.”

2. On the question of whether appositives can or can’t introduce sentences

You said:

If you look carefully and the sentence “A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum, Mwita Chacha, recently related this very curious incident about...,” you will discover that “Mwita Chacha” is less suitable as an appositive than “A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo's English Forum.

You are making a highly subjunctive judgment when you say that in the sentence in question, “Mwita Chacha” is less suitable as an appositive than “A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo's English Forum.” As I pointed out, the decision on what to use or what not to use as an appositive in a sentence is a matter of individual choice depending on the point of view of the writer and the target audience. Of course, it’s understandable for most everybody to expect that his or her name be given more prominence by being mentioned ahead of a particular description of that name, but to insist that other writers and all media do the same—indeed, to insist that this be made a cardinal grammar rule in appositive usage—is going out of line. The mildest thing I can say about that insistence is that it is totally unwarranted either from a grammatical or semantic standpoint.

Another thing: Nowhere in my posting did I say that appositives can’t introduce sentences. In fact, they very well can, but for you to make that false assertion that I said so and then be shocked by it shows that you still need more grounding on the nature and usage of appositives and appositive phrases.

Let’s start all over again to clarify matters for you and for other Forum members who may be confused by your misleading pronouncements.

Take a close look at my original sentence: “A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum, Mwita Chacha, recently related this very curious incident about the use of position titles.”

In that construction, the noun phrase “a Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum” is the subject and “Mwita Chacha” is the appositive.  Grammatically, the noun phrase “a Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum” is specific enough—meaning that alone, it provides enough information for the sentence to retain its meaning—to become the subject of the sentence. This being the case, the appositive “Mwita Chacha” is not essential to the sentence, so it’s actually a nonessential or nonrestrictive appositive, one that can be knocked off from the sentence without affecting its structural validity.

When a writer so desires, however, “Mwita Chacha” can be retained (as I have done in this case), but such a nonessential appositive has to be set off by commas. Not to do so, as you insisted in your version (“A Tanzania-based member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum, Mwita Chacha recently related this very curious incident about...”), makes the construction dysfunctional and grammatically unacceptable.

Now let’s go to the sentences that you later presented to show that appositives can be followed by subjects without commas:

(1) “A fine man, my husband tolerates my grammatical tirades.”
(2) “A vocational counselor, John Smith has agreed to help me get a job.”
(3) “An expert in organ-transplant procedures, the chief surgeon took her nephew on a hospital tour.”
(4) “A bold innovator, Wassily Kandinsky is known for his colorful abstract paintings.”
(6) “A sporty red convertible with bucket seats, my brother’s car is the envy of my friends.”
(7) “A grey-haired convict in the white uniform of the prison, the hangman was waiting beside his machine.”

Take note that with the exception of Sentence 5, each of the sentences you provided is introduced by an appositive that’s not specific enough alone for the sentence to retain its intended meaning, much less to become the subject of the sentence. The appositives in those seven sentences are therefore nonessential or nonrestrictive appositives—meaning that they can be dropped without affecting the structural and semantic integrity of the sentence.

Look at those sentences now without the appositives:

(1) “My husband tolerates my grammatical tirades.”
(2) “John Smith has agreed to help me get a job.”
(3) “The chief surgeon took her nephew on a hospital tour.”
(4) “Wassily Kandinsky is known for his colorful abstract paintings.”
(6) “My brother’s car is the envy of my friends.”
(7) “The hangman was waiting beside his machine.”

It’s actually no accident that the nonessential appositives knocked off from the six sentences above were all introduced by the indefinite article “a” rather than by the definite article “the.” Indeed, the article “a” that introduces an appositive is almost always a telltale sign that it’s a nonessential or nonrestrictive appositive. When sentences are introduced by such nonessential appositives, the subjects they modify don’t need to be set off my commas. In contrast, when we replace the indefinite article “a” with the definite article “the” or “that,” the nonrestrictive appositive normally becomes a restrictive one—in which case the subject it modifies will need to be set off by commas:

(1) “That fine man, my husband James, tolerates my grammatical tirades.”
(2) “The vocational counselor, John Smith, has agreed to help me get a job.”
(3) “The expert in organ-transplant procedures, Chief Surgeon Susan Doe, took her nephew on a hospital tour.”
(4) “The bold innovator, Wassily Kandinsky, is known for his colorful abstract paintings.”
 (6) “My brother’s car, the sporty red convertible with bucket seats, is the envy of my friends.”
(7) “The grey-haired convict in the white uniform of the prison—he was actually the hangman—was waiting beside his machine.”

As to Sentence 5 among your examples, “The popular US president, John Kennedy was known for his eloquent and inspirational speeches,” it’s actually a dysfunctional sentence because the upfront appositive noun phrase “the popular US president” is actually an essential or restrictive appositive, in which case the subject “John Kennedy” should not be preceded by a comma. The sentence should then be corrected as follows:

“The popular US president John Kennedy was known for his eloquent and inspirational speeches.”

If the writer desires to make use of the noun phrase as a nonessential or nonrestrictive appositive,
the definite article “the” has to be replaced by the indefinite article “a,” as follows:

“A popular US president, John Kennedy, was known for his eloquent and inspirational speeches.”

or

“John Kennedy, a popular US president, was known for his eloquent and inspirational speeches.”  

I trust that I have adequately clarified for you the nuances of the proper usage of correlative conjunctions and of appositives.

[Mwita Chacha]

The hardest task a human being can do is defend what can never be defended. You say there's no balance between ''dumb'' and ''they are supremely confident that...'' in ''Either those counterfeits are dumb or they are supremely confident that...'' Perhaps my vision is beginning to deteriorate, but what I see in that sentence is a pair of perfectly balanced clauses ''those counterfeits are dumb'' and ''they are supremely confident that...'' My assessment: Either you've twisted all the four sentences into fitting your misleading assertion or they have been composed by yourself as opposed to by other writers. At any rate, the least we can do at this juncture is agree to disagree instead of carrying on perpetuating an argument that's bound to have no conclusion.   

[Joe Carillo]

On the matter of correlative conjunction usage, I have no problem accepting your suggestion that we now agree to disagree instead of perpetuating the argument. We can leave it at that. Just to clarify matters for the rest of the Forum membership, though, I am restating here your original grammatical propositions:

A. On the usage of the correlative conjunction “either…or…”

1. “A parallelism rule governing the usage of correlative conjunctions demands that the elements being connected be similar both in their length and in their grammatical form.”

I think I have clearly shown that while those elements generally should have the same grammatical form, they need not be similar in length. Rather, they should be of equal grammatical weight—meaning that the two clauses are relatively equal in grammatical importance—and are usually of parallel construction.

2. You made an effort to demonstrate that this sentence is mine is grammatically flawed: “Your colleague is either kidding you, or he or she is a superwriter from another planet.”

I quote below your original argument for making that claim:

“It’s a fact that ‘kidding’ is not only obviously very short in comparison to ‘he or she is a superwriter from another planet’ but also entirely different in grammatical form from it. I’d have written the sentence as ‘Either your colleague is kidding you or he or she is a superwriter from another planet.’ Here ‘either...or’ has perfectly connected two balanced clauses.”

In my subsequent posting, I have sought to demonstrate even more clearly that grammatical elements linked by a correlative conjunction need not be perfectly balanced. The faulty operative word in your proposition is “perfectly.” The correct word is “usually,” and I will go as far as to concede that in the interest of better writing, elements linked by a correlative conjunction should preferably be balanced, but not necessarily be balanced. I think it’s very important for everybody (particularly professional writers) to appreciate this distinction.

B. On the usage of appositive and appositive phrases

I take it that your silence over my further explanation about the usage of appositive and appositive phrases means that I have adequately clarified matters for you. Please confirm this so that other Forum members won’t be confused and we can move on to other grammar issues and problems on a clean slate.