Sentence Correction

48. In 1713, Alexander Pope began his translation of the Iliad,
a work that took him seven years to complete and
that literary critic Samuel Johnson,Pope's contemporary,
pronounced the greatest translation in any language.

42. Scientists have recently discovered what could be the
largest and oldest living organism on Earth, a giant
fungus that is an interwoven filigree of mushrooms and
rootlike tentacles spawned by a single fertilized spore
some 10,000 years ago and extending for more than
30 acres in the soil of a Michigan forest.

38. In 1850, Lucretia Mott published her Discourse on
Women, a treatise that argued for equal political and
legal rights for women and for changes in the
married women's property laws.[/i]

In the above three sentences, the colored portion is the modifier, and I think it is an absolute phrase that modifies the clause before the comma.
Reason: - An absolute phrase consists of noun and noun modifiers. In the above sentences, I applied the following to identify it: work (noun) that.....(noun modifier); a giant figure (noun) that....(noun modifier); a treatise (noun) that... (noun modifier).

But Q#48 in oG12 (the first one above) describes the marked portion as appositive.



Please explain the difference between an appositive and an absolute phrase and how to identify them and how distinguish one from the other.

Posts in which I discussed the concept of apposition:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/george-eliot-t102558.html
https://www.beatthegmat.com/gmat-prep-t75588.html
https://www.beatthegmat.com/re-opening-a ... cityevent=

Posts in which I discussed the use of an absolute phrase:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/modifier-mis ... 37-15.html
https://www.beatthegmat.com/sir-joseph-t59644-15.html

Hey Mitch,

Thank you for the reply.

This is what I understood: -
a) An appositive is a noun positioned in apposition to other noun to describe it.
b) An absolute phrase is a noun + noun modifiers that is connected to an independent clause without conjunction, and that modifies the entire clause before comma and provides context.


A couple of questions:
a) Does an appositive include only noun and completely exclude the noun modifiers? As in the blow sentence:
The nineteenth-century chemist Humphry Davy presented the results of his early experiments in his "Essay on Heat and Light," a critique of all chemistry since Robert Boyle as well as a vision of a new chemistry that Davy hoped to found.

Isn't the colored portion an absolute phrase (a vision - noun; of new chemistry- describes the vision - a modifier)

Also in the sentences that I used. "a work (noun) is positioned next to Iliad (noun); a giant (noun) is positioned next to earth(noun); and a treatise (noun) is positioned next to Discourse ( a name of ook - noun)? Hence i am a little confused about how to identify?

b) From what I have understood, it seems that the "a work" in the first sentence is indeed an absolute phrase. It is also more clear from the explanation in OG when 'a work' is said to describe the 'translation of IIiad'. But why would OG describe it as an appositive?

Also I want to know whether the approach that I followed to identify the absolute phrase was appropriate or it need some correction.