apposition

English grammar questions, answered by Alan

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Alan
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Post by Alan »

Rather unnatural, and possibly prone to misunderstanding, as if there might be some events related to, or which accompanied, their deaths. BTW, 'sepArated' is the correct spelling!

Alan

P.S. There's no grammatical apposition here - why the title??
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Alan
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Post by Alan »

Just for information, 'apposition' means the juxtaposing of two phrases of the same type (normally two noun phrases) where the second constitutes an elaboration of the first, or provides further information about the referent. Thus, in

We know little about the life of the great English playwright, William Shakespeare.

noun phrases 'the great English playwright' and 'William Shakespeare' - both effectively standing as objects of the preposition 'of' - are in apposition.

In your sentence, however, 'the event' is a noun phrase, whereas 'of his death' is a prepositional phrase: syntactically different elements cannot be said to be in apposition.
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