articles / Articles with Predicatives and Appositions

No

Rule

Article

Examples

I.

In the classifying function:

• predicative

• apposition

Sg – a

Pl or uncount – no article

• I am a novelist. My work is human nature.

• Her husband, a Roman prince, was dead.

II.

In the specifying function:

• predicative

• apposition

the

• French was once the language of diplomacy and European culture.

• Nicholas Kenyon, the new controller of Radio 3, made it a little more friendly.

III.

Special notes:

1) when the noun denotes a unique position

2) when the noun denotes a family relationship and is modified by an of-phrase

• the usual neutral variant

• the idea of more than one relation of the kind is emphasized (rare)

• the social position of the person is emphasized

3) when the idea of quality or state predominates over the idea of thingness

4) when the predicative noun opens a clause of concession (literary style)

no article (occasionally the)

the

a

no article

no article

no article

• His father had been head of the police in a small Austrian town.

• I hate to remind you that I’m the editor.

• Charlotte Brontë, the daughter of a clergyman of Irish descent, was the eldest of the remarkable Brontë children.

• He was a son of a fisherman.

• Edward VI, son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, was only nine when he came to the throne.

- She’s fool enough to spend her money on him.

• Countrywoman though she was, her talent lay in getting money out of people rather than vegetables.