summative modifier

Definition:

A modifier (usually a noun phrase) that appears at the end of a sentence and serves to summarize the idea of the main clause. See also:

• Resumptive Modifier
• Apposition
• Appositive
• Postmodifier
• Premodifier
• Sentence Building With Appositives

Etymology:

Term introduced by Joseph M. Williams in "Defining Complexity" (College English, Feb. 1979)

Examples and Observations:

• "The lane climbs up Hart's Hill to a view across Berkshire that could have been a frontispiece for Morton's book--lush, small, irregular fields, black cattle lying in ear-tagged ease, their legs folded, the vegetative green fading with distance into some darker namelessness of colour, patches of woodland, rooks in the air like wheeling black smuts, the light softly diffused, the air somehow afternoon rich and heavy and over-oxygenated, almost cloying--a small-scale, domesticated, inimitable landscape."
  (Joe Bennett, Mustn't Grumble: In Search of England and the English. Simon & Schuster UK, 2006)



• "Here are two sentences that contrast relative clauses and summative modifiers. Notice how the which in the first one feels 'tacked on':

  Economic changes have reduced Russian population growth to less than zero which will have serious social implications.
  
  Economic changes have reduced Russian population growth to less than zero, a demographic event that will have serious social implications.

  To create a summative modifier, end a grammatically complete segment of a sentence with a comma, . . . find a noun that sums up the substance of the sentence, . . . [and then] continue with a relative clause."
  (Joseph M. Williams, Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace. Longman, 2003)



• "In example 47 [below], the second unit . . . in this kind of apposition, termed a summative modifier by Williams (1979:609), first summarizes the ideas expressed in the first unit and then attributes some characteristic to them. In example 47, the first part of the second unit, a process, provides a very general summary of the activity of decomposition discussed in the first unit; the relative clause following this noun phrase characterizes this process as one that occurs more rapidly in a specific environment.

  (47) These micro-organisms decompose organic matter in the soil and release plant nutrients, a process which occurs particularly rapidly in an oxidised soil under tropical conditions of warmth and humidity. (SEU w.9.6.18)"

  (Charles F. Meyer, Apposition in Contemporary English. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992)