VACANA
School of Liberal Arts
Mae Fah Luang University
School of Liberal Arts
Mae Fah Luang University
ISSN: 2287-0903
This study investigated syntactic structures and semantic classes of appositive noun phrases in fashion texts, applied linguistics articles and a novel. While previous studies paid attention to the study of appositive noun phrases in writing of learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and newspapers, this study focuses on appositive noun phrases in fashion texts, applied linguistics articles and a novel. The data of fashion texts were gathered from The Anatomy of Fashion (McDonell, 2013) and Dior (Palmer, 2019) due to their being best-sellers (www.amazon.com). The data of applied linguistics articles were derived from Journal of English for Specific Purposes as indexed in Scopus. The data of a novel were collected from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain, 2020). It is a best-selling novel and its content is regarded as being suitable for everyone (www.amazon.com). Within a total of 150,000 words, there are 32 tokens of appositive relative clauses, referring to sentences. The interpretations of syntactic structures in appositive noun phrases follow Radford (2016). The interpretations of semantic classes follow Biber and Gray (2013). In regard to data validation, three English teachers were asked to validate the data to ensure their accuracy. The results show that the percentages of appositive noun phrases in adjuncts in fashion texts, applied linguistics articles and the novel are 85.71 percent, 87.50 present and 100 percent, respectively. The semantic classes of appositive noun phrases in fashion texts and applied linguistics articles are frequently used as the semantic class of exemplification. It is expected that this study will be beneficial to learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) and learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL).
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