§ 459. Attributes are secondary parts of the sentence serving to modify nouns or noun-equivalents in whatever functions they are used in the sentence.
In simple sentences attributes can be words or groups of words, including complexes. Diverse classes of words are used as attributes: adjectives, nouns, pronouns, articles, numerals, verbids, some adverbs.
E.g. Every morning for twenty-four years Samuel had taken the same train, except of course on Sundays and during his fortnight's holiday at the seaside. (Maugham).
Jan looked at them with frightened, unbelieving eyes. (Cusack).
This is something for you to think about. (Aldington).
They were just group pictures. (Dreiser).
§ 460. Attributes are formally indicated only by the position they occupy, save the demonstrative pronouns this, these, that, those which, besides, agree in number with the uord they modify.
§ 461. In English the attribute and the head-noun are united structurally. If the noun is not mentioned for some reason (for instance, to avoid repetition which might make it emphatic), its place is taken by a substituting word to preserve the structural unity of an attributive word-combination, as in She is a nice girl and a clever one.
§ 462. Semantically attributes may express various shades of relations with the nouns they modify. They may be qualitative (deep sea), quantitative (many children), circumstantial (the house on t h e h i I I), etc. Here we shall dwell only on three peculiar semantical groups: the subjective, objective and appositive attributes.
Nouns of verbal nature may have subjective or objective attributes. Subjective attributes are mostly possessive pronouns or nouns in the possessive case, as in h i s arrival, John ' s confession. These combinations may be conveniently considered to derive from predications: He arrived -* his arrival; John confessed -> John's confession.
Similarly, nouns of adjectival nature may take subjective attributes. Mary is happy -^-Mary's happiness. His father is ill -^ his father's illness.
Objective attributes are mostly prepositional phrases attached to nouns of verbal nature: depend on others -> dependence on others; remind of the war -> reminder î f the war.
As to combinations of the iypeher daughter's loss, Martin's arrest, see §§ 93—94.
§ 463. A variety of the attribute is the so-called 'apposition' ('appositive' attribute). It is mostly a noun placed by the side of another noun (or noun-equivalent) to characterize the person, thing or idea the head-noun denotes by indicating the class or group to which this person (thing or idea) belongs. Aunt Mary, Sergeant Smith, Professor Brown.
There is much vacillation in the treatment of word-combinations like Aunt Mary. Some linguists take the common noun for an apposition J, others — the proper name 2. We think it more in keeping with the language facts to support the former view.
The most typical formal signs of the English attribute (and appositions are but a variety of attributes) are its place before the head-noun (cf. a kin d aunt), or its left-hand connections with a preposition (cf. the arrival of Mary). Hence we distinguish prepositionless and prepositional appositions as in Ñ a p t a i n Gray and the city of Moscow.
I
1 B. H. Æ è ã à ä ë î, È. Ï. È â à í î â à, Ë. Ë. È î ô è ê,
op cit., p. 290—291.
2 Ì. Ganshma, N. Vasilevskaya, op. cit., p. 309.
Commenting on prepositional appositions, M. Mincoff writes: l "The reason for the establishment of this foreign construction is fairly obvious. Apposition of the simple type (cf. ãîðîä Ìîñêâà) is not encouraged in English because when two substantives are coupled together, the first is felt to be more like an adjective than a substantive,* the city London would inevitably suggest a contrast with some village London." Here also belong such groups as a flower of a g i r I, a brute of a husband, etc.
§ 464. Within the subclass of prepositionless appositions (appositive attributes) we distinguish those which are associated with the syntactical word-morphemes it and there, and represent the notional subject (see § 390).
It is stimulating to do something real. (Aldington).
The peculiarity of this apposition is that it carries the whole lexical weight of the combination it... to do.
§ 465. There exists no hard and fast demarcation line between appositive attributes and all other attributes. In this connection we may compare two similar word-combinations, child psychology and woman doctor. In the latter, woman may be regarded as an apposition to doctor; in the former, child is not an apposition to psychology. Cf. Brown (that is a) professor -+ Professor Brown; Mary (that is an) aunt -> Aunt Mary; A doctor (that is a) woman -»• a woman doctor, but not * psychology (that is a) child.
§ 466. We do not dwell here on the so-called loose appositions because the latter (as well as other loose (detached) parts of the sentence) are discussed in detail elsewhere. 2