Apposition

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Things that add context/explanation/definition/description/name.

In English (and presumably in general), appositional modifiers are typically placed directly next to the things they augment, and typically both parts of the relation are nominals.

For example:

• the parenthetical in "John, a mathematician, has a habit of mumbling" adds contextual information to John

• abbreviations next to their expansion

• in men and women, both are put it a more limited and specific context, which suggests that in this context we are grouping or distinguishing gender.

• In The name John stands for ..., name is an appositional modifier for John

• Arguably, things like
  • putting an abbreviation next to the long form ()
  • putting titles next to names, e.g. "Senator Alice Bob"

• You can have multiple
  • Bob, your sister, my lover, ...

Note that

• since the explanation can be long, the appositional relation between a phrase's head can be some words away

In "The leader of the national opposition, Bob, ...", leader has an appositional relation to bob,

• the previous example is also an example that, while a lot of apposition is fairly parenthentical and punctuation is a good indication, there are variants that do not look like that

• when in doubt whether something is an appositional relation
  • ask whether you could swap the two things

Appositions are used to help clarify and/or disambiguate.

(not to be confused with adpositions)