# Placement of тоже in sentence



## french_learner06

I am not sure where to properly place the word 'тоже'... can it be placed anywhere and still make sense?

Here is the context:  someone in Russia mentioned to me New Year's, and I responded that Christmas is in January too.  

Here is the sentence:

*Я думаю, что Рождество тоже в январе, там.*

If anyone can confirm if this is correct, I'd appreciate it.


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## DrDIT

I assume that you are going to say "I believe that Christmas there is in January, too". Almost correct: Я полагаю, что Рождество [в России] тоже в январе. "Там" is out of place here ("...in January, there" does not make sense). Also, "думаю" does not sound right to me in this context. I'd say "полагаю" or "считаю" (assume, believe).


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## Maroseika

In this phrase тоже can be placed only before в январе or after it. The first variant is neutral, the second underlined the word тоже/
However the word там makes no sense here.


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## french_learner06

Yes, I did want to say that ("I believe that Christmas there is in January, too.").
спаси́бо за по́мощь


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## Sobakus

_Я думаю_ translates to _I guess_ in this context. _Полагать_ has a markedly official style, making it unsuitable for a casual chat; _считать_ underlines the subjective nature of your statement, much like _to consider_. In the spoken style, you want _мне кажется_ and _по-моему_ (both meaning _I think/believe_). Note also that depending on whether you want the topic to be _там_ or _Рождество_, you need to put it right after the _вводное словосочетание_, or even before it.

_Тоже_ can be placed virtually anywhere in the sentence except for the very beginning, modifying different words, though I can't figure out the exact pattern. There's an easier _и+noun_, which always translates to "as well", but it can't be used with prepositional phrases, so using it you could say "Christmas as well" but not "in January as well".


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## rur1920

Sobakus said:


> _Полагать_ has a markedly official style, making it unsuitable for a casual chat; _считать_ underlines the subjective nature of your statement, much like _to consider_.


'Unsuitable' is too strong a word, all three are okay in this context. "Я думаю" means, roughly, "I have reasons to think", "I conclude" and is also subjective; probably "subjective" was not the word you meant. "Тоже" can appear in the very beginning as well ("Тоже и они не хотели думать об этом"), but this placement is constrained a lot, that's right. I think Maroseika is right that the safest way to place "тоже" for foreigners is in vicinity of 'modified' words (i.e. words that define notions out of a collection, so I can take another instance; another instance of "being в январе" for example), but it seems that, for example, direct objects don't like to be 'modified' by this word. 'Topic' is too subtle a subject to make any definite conclusions about it; and even those conclusions that are made, it is impossible to shape them in words and tell them to a language student. 'Рождество' can well be a 'topic' and be placed the last. The construction with the co-ordinating conjunction can be used with prepositional phrases ("в России и в январе празднуют Рождество"), but it means exactly that: that January is _also_ a month in which Russians meet the Christmas. So, either this month is added to the collection of months in which Russians meet the Christmas, or the told fact is added by this conjunction in the collection of things that are strange, but are a fact.


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## Sobakus

rur1920 said:


> 'Unsuitable' is too strong a word, all three are okay in this context. "Я думаю" means, roughly, "I have reasons to think", "I conclude" and is also subjective; probably "subjective" was not the word you meant. "Тоже" can appear in the very beginning as well ("Тоже и они не хотели думать об этом"), but this placement is constrained a lot, that's right. I think Maroseika is right that the safest way to place "тоже" for foreigners is in vicinity of 'modified' words (i.e. words that define notions out of a collection, so I can take another instance; another instance of "being в январе" for example), but it seems that, for example, direct objects don't like to be 'modified' by this word. 'Topic' is too subtle a subject to make any definite conclusions about it; and even those conclusions that are made, it is impossible to shape them in words and tell them to a language student. 'Рождество' can well be a 'topic' and be placed the last. The construction with the co-ordinating conjunction can be used with prepositional phrases ("в России и в январе празднуют Рождество"), but it means exactly that: that January is _also_ a month in which Russians meet the Christmas. So, either this month is added to the collection of months in which Russians meet the Christmas, or the told fact is added by this conjunction in the collection of things that are strange, but are a fact.


I maintain that neither word is suitable in the context of a casual conversation. The accent in my statement on subjectivity was on _underline_, that is, _думать_, while obviously referring to subjective thought, doesn't underline the subjectivity (opinion). The Russian _считать_, as well as the English _to consider_ on the other hand, do exactly that. Used in this phrase, it would mean _"I consider Christmas to be in January as well there"_, making your statement very much independent of the reality.

While _тоже и_, as opposed to simple _тоже_, can be used in the beginning of a sentence, this sounds to me 18 century at best.

As for direct objects, they go perfectly well with postpositive _тоже_ (_кефир тоже купи!_), and when it's unclear which word it modifies (like in _Я кефир тоже купил_), the _и <...> тоже_ construction can be used.

The concept of topic-comment is quite well established and defined, if not immediately clear. In the sentence _"По-моему, в России в январе тоже Рождество"_ _в России_ is comment, while the topic is _Рождество – в январе_, and this sentence cannot be used in the context provided by the author. This can be easily proved by dropping the topic altogether (it's already known). In the author's sentence, however, I'm not sure any more, since we don't have the phrase that we're replying to, but I'm beginning to think it's actually _"в январе"_, while the comment is what I said the topic was.  Tricky, I agree, especially in unclear context. What's become evident to me after thinking about this is that the placement of _тоже_ is dependent on the sentence's topic and comment, which is no wonder, because it connects the two.

As for _и_ with prepositional phrases, that's my oversight, I wasn't thinking of this sense.


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## rur1920

Sobakus said:


> I maintain that neither word is suitable in the context of a casual conversation.


Generally,  I disagree, and I think it depends on personality, not on words: DrDit  and I think they are all okay, you don't think so. One never knows what  kind of personality a language learner has, either one who asked the  question or one who inspected the question after having found it via a  search. But in the exact context, which I missed (enumerate the festivals in January in Russia), I agree with you: only  думаю is appropriate.


> While _тоже и_, as opposed to simple _тоже_, can be used in the beginning of a sentence, this sounds to me 18 century at best.


That is again a question of personality rather than language. I can't  say I don't feel anything literary or old about it (somehow these  notions melt together in Russian, unfortunately), but that is what I  think while typing this message; in more natural circumstances, the expression can  be simply used without even realising it. What expressions are the current  language, i.e. the language to use, is a psychological matter, so you never  know. It is not like words of the kind поелику, which are funny now and were funny in the 19 century. By the way, I don't know why you  mentioned the 18 century: if you learnt well the 18 century literature,  that might have played a role (I didn't), but in principle the  19-century literature is, so to say, "our own", and the 18-century  literature is, so to say, literature of the past generations, which were  interested in slightly different things or thought in slightly  different directions. So, expected this expression to be labelled a  "19-century" one, even though labels do not neatly correspond to  reality. I'd prefer to avoid any time labels and simply say this  expression ("тоже и") is rare, or rather especially far from being "a default one".


> As for direct objects, they go perfectly well with postpositive _тоже_ (_кефир тоже купи!_), and when they don't, the _и <...> тоже_ construction can be used.


Also (in a zoo, little children talk):
- Я видел слона!
- А я лисицу.
- Я тоже видел слона.


> The concept of topic-comment is quite well established and  defined, if not immediately clear without some reading. I wasn't making  any general statement about it, I was referring to this exact context.  In the sentence _"По-моему, там в январе тоже Рождество"_ _там тоже_ is comment, while the topic is _Рождество – в январе_,  and this sentence cannot be used in the context provided by the author.  This can be easily proved by dropping the topic altogether (it's  already known).


I have no voice here because I am not the asker, but I think that in  that case 'some reading' had to be pointed out or at least the major  points had to be, because without some reading this concept is  absolutely not clear, we use the simple word 'topic' (in Russian,  "тема") in many ways. Wikipedia makes nothing clear, I tried your link;  all it says are common words like 'be about', 'be talked about', or  'information structure', which I also can use in many ways. But  consider:
- В России январь начинается с Нового Года. А Рождество когда у них?
- Я думаю, что у них тоже в январе Рождество. Во всяком случае, в декабре они не празднуют. Вроде бы.
Not sure whether the sentence  fails the test of omitting the word "Рождество", but  Рождество corresponds to all that Wikipedia wrote about "the topic"; and yet it well occupies the last position. If it fails the test, then I  think the reason it does is not that "it is not already known"  (but what does "to know Рождество" mean, after all…).


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## Sobakus

rur1920 said:


> I have no voice here because I am not the asker, but I think that in  that case 'some reading' had to be pointed out or at least the major  points had to be, because without some reading this concept is  absolutely not clear, we use the simple word 'topic' (in Russian,  "тема") in many ways. Wikipedia makes nothing clear, I tried your link;  all it says are common words like 'be about', 'be talked about', or  'information structure', which I also can use in many ways. But  consider:
> - В России январь начинается с Нового Года. А Рождество когда у них?
> - Я думаю, что у них тоже в январе Рождество. Во всяком случае, в декабре они не празднуют. Вроде бы.
> Not sure whether It  fails the test of omitting the word "Рождество", but  Рождество corresponds to all that Wikipedia wrote about the topic; and yet it well occupies the last position, conveying the sense of a continued doubt. If it fails the test, then I  think the reason it does is not that "it is not already known"  (but what does "to know Рождество" mean, after all…)


I specifically linked the Wikipedia article to show that I'm using the word "topic" in the linguistic sense. I figured the article made this sense more clear and defined than my explanation would have. In your example, the topic would be _у них (в России) Рождество_, while the comment is _в январе_ as the comment will pretty much always be the answer to the question, the new information. What I mean by "already known" is exactly what topic is, it's not an abstract knowledge, but always defined or presumed by the context.

Also, I've since made a couple of corrections and clarifications to my original post.


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## rur1920

DrDIT said:


> "Там" is out of place here ("...in January, there" does not make sense).


"Там" meant "in Russia", like in: "Послушай, там, далеко-далеко, есть земля. Там Новый Год, ты не поверишь, там Новый Год два раза в год, вот" (authored by "Високосный год"). But I agree, in the asker's family of contexts "там" might sound not very well, I don't know why. Maybe because the question is about decisions made by people (when does one celebrate the Christmas), rather than about countries like in the song.


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## rur1920

Sobakus said:


> In your example, the topic would be _у них (в России) Рождество_, while the comment is _в январе_ as the comment will pretty much always be the answer to the question, the new information.


"Я думаю, тоже в январе у них Рождество", although stretched, is also a possible answer; it has a shade of "I have to state the obvious, but unfortunately I doubt the obvious, so that is a weird situation with me". I think we have to come to the conclusion that it is possible to answer what a topic is (clarifications are needed indeed), but it does not play any definite role in determining the word order. Anyway, thank you for your explanation. I would resay, "a comment is those words that express what the listener wants to learn, and a topic is all other words". In that case, these notions make sense specifically in the case a listener wants to learn something; this is a common situation, though. So, in the first sentence ("В России январь начинается …"), the listener learns everything and therefore the entire sentence is a comment.


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## Sobakus

I'm afraid there can't be a comment without a topic, that is, there can be to the listener, but then they have to request the topic from the speaker:
-Тоже в январе в России. (topic implied – _Рождество_)
-Что "тоже в январе в России"? (topic – _(тоже) в январе в России_, comment – _что_)
-Да Рождество. (topic implied – _(тоже) в январе в России_)


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## rur1920

Please see that I edited the message to refer to the exact sentence that I meant, it was the starting sentence of the conversation. In it, all words are equal for the listener from the point of view of his learning skills, so they are either all a comment, or all a topic, depending on which phase the Moon is in.  Without the learner, the definitions make no sense… PS: don't we have to ask a moderator to join this conversation into some thread in the "Linguistics" subforum? Maybe more people will be able to comment. I searched there for "topic comment" but have not found a special thread, though.


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## rur1920

Sobakus said:


> I'm beginning to think it's actually _"в январе"_, while the comment is what I said the topic was.  Tricky, I agree, especially in unclear context. What's become evident to me after thinking about this is that the placement of _тоже_ is dependent on the sentence's topic and comment, which is no wonder, because it connects the two.


It is tricky, and I have to conclude that the trick stems from general impossibility to know the other person's thinking process, and also from the fact that language does not have to define such processes in an exact manner, and indeed such processes to be defined do not have to exist at all. Does the listener intend to learn in the message the "в январе" part or the "Рождество" part? Nobody cares! That does not depend on the message itself.


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## Sobakus

Again, any utterance has a topic and a comment, it can't be about nothing or say nothing about it. In your sentence, the topic is _в России_, it's marked by the word order. In the original poster's English sentence ("I believe that Christmas there is in January, too.") it's _in January_ or _there in January_, since "too" in this sense will always follow the topic. The topic is defined from the perspective of the communicative situation, specifically from the speaker's point of view, since they will always know what exactly they're talking about.


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## rur1920

See, you defined the topic and the comment in my sentence, but you followed no procedure to do that, you did it at will. One may know or not know the things that he is talking about, but in the case one does, it does not have to be the "new information" for the listener (the listener may exactly learn what I am talking about); otherwise, "what I am talking about" is "everything I said". By the way, if I change the sentence into "Январь в России начинается …", I do not necessarily change the sense, that depends.


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## Sobakus

I don't think you understand what a topic and a comment is. I suggest you read up on their concept further, in Russian it's also called актуальное членение предложения. Not knowing what you're talking about is logically impossible (barring cases of psychological disability).  Although you're right about the word order: it's certainly not the only thing defining the topic, it's actually primarily the intonation, but in Russian the intonation is linked to the word order and in this instance, they coincide. This is further evident from the following sentence, where the topic is explicitly referred to by the pronominal phrase _у них_.


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## rur1920

Sobakus said:


> I don't think you understand what a topic and a comment is. I suggest you read up on their concept further.


I already said that I have no voice here, because the person to receive an explanation was the asker, so it was up to him to ask you what you meant; at least it is well seen that no general language learner would understand your very first explanation, so maybe you didn't have to mention the concept at all. Again, what kind of answer was asked from you is not up to me to decide. What I was trying to find out was whether this concept is at all meaningful, and nothing suggested to me that it is, as of yet… You are not obliged to teach me anything, of course, I just said what I was trying to find out. As to knowing what one is talking about, well, I disambiguated two meanings of this expression; in the case I don't mean the logical division of the subject (properties of which objects should I find out? Not always do I know it), "what I am talking about" is expressed by the entire sentence, in absence of listeners and learners nothing makes any part of my sentences stand out. But I referred only to your argument for presence of both a topic and a comment in a sentence, I didn't refer to the concept of 'topic', whatever it is, myself.


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## rur1920

I started a thread on this topic on the subforum "Linguistics", here.


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