Members of sentences, as is known from the school course of the Russian language, are divided into two categories: main and secondary. Unlike the main members of the sentence, which make up the grammatical basis, minor members may be absent. Nevertheless, their role in the language is great: without additions, circumstances and definitions, our speech would be inaccurate and inexpressive.
Definition is one of the secondary members of the sentence. Its general grammatical meaning is a sign of the subject. The questions that the definition answers are exactly the same as those of the adjective: “what?” and “whose?”.
By the way, it is this similarity that makes it difficult for schoolchildren to parse.
Having become accustomed to the fact that most often an adjective acts as a definition, students mentally put an equal sign between them. But! Just as an adjective can be a different member of a sentence, so the definition is expressed by different parts of speech.
To do proper parsing, you need to remember that there are two kinds of definitions: consistent and non-consistent.
Definition can be agreed upon orinconsistent depending on the type of subordination between words.
Agreed definition forms a connection with the word being defined according to the type of agreement. Simply put, both words denoting an object and its attribute are in the same gender, case and number. Agreed definitions in the sentence are adjectives and participles in the full form, participial constructions, as well as ordinal numbers and some pronouns.
For example: Attentive (Im.p., pl.) pedestrians (Im.p., pl.), observing (Im.p., pl.) traffic rules, cross the road only to the green (V.p., m.r., single) signal (V.p., m.r., single) of a traffic light.
It should be noted that the isolation of agreed definitions is governed by a number of rules and usually does not cause much difficulty.
An inconsistent definition obeys the word being defined most often by the type of control and less often - adjunctions.
An inconsistent definition is a sign of a subject that can be expressed in the following ways.
Noun and pronoun in oblique cases:
I learned about (whose?) his novels from a friend (whose?) father.
Syntactically indivisible phrase:
Hugo is a writer (what?) with a capital letter.
A simple comparative adjective or adverb:
Reading (what?) aloud develops the imagination.
Infinitive:
I had a desire (what?) to read a novel.
Since an inconsistent definition expresses a sign more specific than an agreed one, it often has the additional meaning of circumstance and addition.
If the author puts a logical emphasis on an inconsistent definition, then isolation is justified.
Also, punctuation marks between definitions are necessary if they are homogeneous, even if there are definitions expressed in different parts of speech in the same row.
