<p>Why is it C and not D? Shouldn't it be choice D, since it is an modifying phrase?</p>
<p>obviously it wasn’t a modifying phrase. Similar example,</p>
<p>Friend Bob was great.
Teacher Bob was great.
Friend and teacher Bod was great. </p>
<p>yeah?</p>
<p>If you want to use an appositive, you better be able to use it as the subject instead.</p>
<p>For example:
(this is grammatically correct)</p>
<p>A fluffy cat, Milton likes cheese.
You could just say: A fluffy cat likes cheese</p>
<p>This is incorrect:</p>
<p>Fluffy cat, Milton likes cheese.
Fluffy cat likes cheese.</p>
<p>So relating this logic to the sentence:</p>
<p>African American writer and teacher, Rita Dove was poet laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995.</p>
<p>African American writer and teacher was poet laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995.</p>
<p>Since this sentence doesn’t make any sense we can’t use an appositive, so [C] is the correct answer.</p>
<p>mmmm i understand that but i still don’t quite get why it’s not a modifier.</p>
<p>“African American writer and teacher” is certainly a modifying phrase. All a modifying phrase is is a phrase that modifies something else. In this case, the phrase modifies (describes) “Rita Dove.”</p>
<p>But the phrase in this case serves basically as an adjective, and you never put a comma between an adjective and a noun. You wouldn’t say “blue, skies”; you would say “blue skies.” Here are examples of the same usage, where a noun is being used as an adjective (in bold):
President Obama
Actor Dustin Hoffman
Jazz singer and songwriter Billie Holiday
Like “African American writer and teacher,” these examples are titles that are nouns acting as adjectives.</p>
<p>If you wanted to modify “Rita Dove” with the use of a COMMA, then you could use a relative clause (a form of dependent clause), like who is an African American writer and teacher:
Rita Dove, who is an African American writer and teacher, was poet laureate. . . .
Or you could use the non-restrictive appositive An African American writer and teacher:
An African American writer and teacher, Rita Dove was poet laureate. . . .
The difference between the appositive (“An African American writer and teacher,” followed by a comma) and the title (“African American writer and teacher,” not followed by a comma) is that the former resembles a noun phrase while the latter resembles an adjective. You could think of the appositive as a noun phrase that renames another noun phrase, but one that is put in parentheses: New York City, the capital of New York, is incredibly heavily populated is the same as New York City ([which is] the capital of New York), is incredibly heavily populated. Putting something in parentheses is similar to putting it between two commas.</p>
<p>Here is an example of a sentence with a non-restrictive appositive, and, alternatively, its rewritten sentence with an adjectival title instead:
Appositive: A great actor, Dustin Hoffman has starred in many great films such as The Graduate and Kramer vs. Kramer.
Title: Great actor Dustin Hoffman has starred in many great films such as The Graduate and Kramer vs. Kramer.</p>
<p>I’m not entirely sure that everything I’ve said is correct. But hopefully it makes sense and these forms are familiar to you. The distinction could be simplified to the difference between *President Obama<a href=“adjectival%20title”>/i</a> and *The president of the United States, Barack Obama, . . .<a href=“a%20separate%20noun%20phrase”>/i</a>.</p>
<p>So essentially, its lacking “An” which would make it a modifying phrase?</p>
<p>No, it’s a modifying phrase with or without the “An.” The “An” just makes it a different kind of modifying phrase, a modifier that acts as a noun phrase (requiring a comma). Without the “An,” the phrase would be a modifier that acts as an adjective (requiring no comma).</p>