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I found the following example sentence in "ドリル&ドリル日本語能力試験N2文法" (p.49):

早く結婚したいなあ。だれか素敵な人に会えないかなあ。

My attempt at a translation would be:

I want to get married soon! I wish I could meet someone nice.

My question is, are だれか and 素敵な人 in apposition here?

I don't think I've noticed apposition before in Japanese, so I'm wondering if I'm misinterpreting the grammar here.

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The Japanese language has appositive constructions, too, but I don't think だれか素敵な人 is an example of apposition. To say something is in apposition to something, you have to be able to join the two phrases using an equal sign (=) or "is".

  • my friend Michael (Michael is my friend)
  • Jack the Ripper (Jack is the ripper)
  • アメリカ大統領ジョー・バイデン (Joe Biden is the US President)
  • 水の都ヴェネツィア (Venice is the City of Water)

This does not apply for だれか素敵な人 ("someone is a nice person" is not correct). Likewise, I don't think "something delicious" or "someone special" in English is not an appositive construction.

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