IMMIGRATION thread

[Montmorency]

The sources you cite try to draw the line between apposition and (pre)modification. It is nonsense. Apposition (as a grammatical construction) may stand in pre-position (premodifying the antecedent) and post-position (post-modifying the antecedent). But it doesn't change its NATURE.
The classification that your sources offer reminds me the classification of animals in one old Chinese "encyclopaedia". According to it all animals are divided into embalmed ones, suckling piglets and those that belong to the emperor.

The Meyer classification gives the characteristics of apposition and formally distinguishes them from other grammatical relations. The classification you favor is, like what, that all animals are divided into - animals? That isn't much of an insight into the nature of animals.

Perhaps this overview diagram from Meyer will help:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Also, here's a recent full treatment that also uses Dutch as a case language, though it's even further from your preference than my previous reference, Meyer.

(4) a. My brother Peter is still at college.
b. My brother, Peter, is still at college.

(5) a. The poet Pushkin was born in Moskow.
b. The poet, Pushkin, was born in Moskow.

The restrictive example (4a) suggests that the speaker has several brothers and picks
out the one called Peter. In the appositive variant (4b), however, the anchor refers to
only one brother and the apposition just adds that this brother is called Peter.
Similarly, in the restrictive (5a), the poet Pushkin can be used to introduce someone
the speaker did not know before, whereas the poet in itself does not have a referent
yet. In (5b), on the other hand, a poet must have been introduced in the previous
discourse. Therefore, the poet directly refers to this person and the apposition just
adds that his name is Pushkin

Though almost everyone mentions both close and loose apposition
nowadays, the main focus is on the loose, or non-restrictive, construction. This
construction is usually taken as apposition proper. In the common view, loose and
close apposition are not considered two variants of one construction, but two
different constructions with a different structure and meaning. Still, a relatively new
work like Meyer (1992) views the two as just two classes of the same grammatical
phenomenon. However, I think that close and loose apposition do not only differ in
intonation and meaning, but also in structure.

To highlight the difference in perspectives then, "the poet Burns/Pushkin" is not considered appositive here.

Taking the arguments above into account, together with the clear difference in
intonation and meaning, I conclude that close and loose appositions are structurally
different constructions. I therefore exclude the restrictive construction from the class
of appositions. For more details on the restrictive construction, I refer to De Vries
(2008a), who analyses most of its subtypes as attributive modifying direct speech. In
the rest of this thesis, I will only be concerned with the non-restrictive variant.

As we saw above, an appositional construction conveys its own proposition,
separate from the main proposition. The next question is then how this proposition is
built from the underlying structure. The first step in answering this question is to
show that appositions have the properties of nominal predicates, not of arguments.

Doron’s third argument to analyze appositions as nominal predicates is
based on the possibility for some nominals to appear without an article in predicate
position. Whereas this possibility is rather restricted in English, bare nominals as
predicates are quite common in many other Germanic and Romance languages (De
Swart et al. 2007). These predicates usually relate to capacities like professions,
religions, nationalities and titles. Here are some Dutch examples, illustrating that
bare nominals occur in appositions and in predicate positions, but not in argument
positions. Note that (46c) and (47c) would be acceptable in newspaper headlines,
where determiners are often left out. Such telegram style writing is irrelevant for our
purposes, however.

(46) a. Drs. Mallebrootje, uitvinder van de automatische [Dutch]
MA Mallebrootje inventor of the automatic
appositieontleder, doet mee aan de verkiezingen.
apposition.analyser does with at the elections
‘Mallebrootje MA, the inventor of the automatic apposition analyser,
takes part in the elections.’

b. Drs. Mallebrootje is uitvinder.
MA Mallebrootje is inventor
‘Mallebrootje MA is an inventor.’

c. * Uitvinder doet mee aan de verkiezingen.
inventor does with at the elections
Intended: ‘An/The inventor takes part in the elections.’

(47) a. Hadassa, jood van geboorte, eet geen varkensvlees.
Hadassa jew of birth eats no pork
‘Hadassa, a jew by birth, does not eat pork.’

b. Hadassa is jood van geboorte.
Hadassa is jew of birth
‘Hadassa is a jew by birth.’

c. * Jood van geboorte eet geen varkensvlees.
jew of birth eats no pork
Intended: ‘A/The jew by birth eats no pork.’

Hey, I am a bigot in your eyes anyway so there's nothing to gain

'Hey, I am a negro in your eyes anyway so there's nothing to gain'

I think this is an important and revealing juxtaposition, especially as it relates to the "pluralism saturation" I discussed earlier.