# Cправа, обратите внимание, церковь.



## Pitt

Hello,

I'd like to know if both sentences are correct:

*1 Cправа, обратите внимание, церковь.
2 Cправа, обратите внимание  на церковь.
*
Thanks in advance!


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## gvozd

The second is definitely incorrect. But you can say "Обратите внимание на церковь справа". But I think we need a brief description of the situation as always.


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## Maroseika

The second sentence would be formally correct without a comma. But its more natural variant would be the one suggested by *gvozd*.

If omitting auxiliary parts of the sentences: 
1. Cправа ... церковь. (Церковь - subject, справа - predicate.)
2. Обратите внимание*.* (compound predicate of the Imperative).


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## Pitt

gvozd said:


> The second is definitely incorrect. But you can say "Обратите внимание на церковь справа". But I think we need a brief description of the situation as always.



Thanks! The context: A tour guide is pointing to a church.


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## Pitt

Большое спасибо! Could you give me another example with *обратите внимание  на...*?


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## Wladimir_Msc

Pitt said:


> Большое спасибо! Could you give me another example with *обратите внимание  на...*?


You can use any object after *на* in accusative case.

Обратите внимание на _(что?)_ Останкинскую башню слева от нас.
Обрати внимание на _(кого?)_ девушку в красном платье, которая стоит впереди.


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## Enquiring Mind

Perhaps it's worth mentioning that there's often an automatic tendency to translate обратить внимание as "to pay attention" when, in most of the contexts I see or hear it, it usually just means "notice" or "observe". In your tour guide context here, it would certainly be "notice", "observe" or "(have a) look at" the church on your right. An English native speaker would not say "pay attention to the church on your right" here. (Why? Is the church saying something?)


> Could you give me another example with *обратите внимание  на...*?


 As WM says, it's на + accusative, so:

(1) На что обратить внимание при покупке стиральной машины?   [What to look (out) for when buying ....] 
(2) Ниже будут приведены некоторые особенности, на которые стоит обратить внимание, если вы планируете приобрести планшетный компьютер. [... some of the features worth looking out for ...]
(3) В статье вы подробнее узнаете о том, как не обращать внимание на мнения окружающих, психологи дадут вам некоторые советы и рекомендации, следуя которым вы сможете жить свободнее и самим решать, что вам нравиться и что вы хотите. (source: psyh-olog.ru)
[... find out how not to listen to ....][... how to ignore ...][... how to take no notice of ...][... how to pay no attention to ...]


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## igusarov

Pitt said:


> The context: A tour guide is pointing to a  church.


In this context both sentences are possible. The intent  of the guide is to tell the tourists to look at the church on right -  that's clear from them both, despite some differences in the literal meaning. I agree: the sentence suggested by gvozd is  by far more nice and smooth, but the tourists would not know where to  look until the end of the sentence. So I can understand the guide who  wanted to tell them the right direction first and compose the rest of  the sentence later. Moving the word "справа" to the front does the job. I  would say it is acceptable and doesn't make the second sentence sound  illiterate in this colloquial context.


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## gvozd

igusarov said:


> In this context both sentences are possible.



No. A native speaker of Russian can't say "Справа обратите внимание на церковь".

This sentence is mere gibberish. What's that mean? It sounds more like the people standing on the guide's right should have a look at the church which stands God knows where. Or probably the guide suggests to observe the right side of the church. 

If you want to indicate first thing where it stands, you can say "Справа (от нас) находится церковь, обратите (на неё) внимание".

Also: "Посмотрите направо, там находится церковь".


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## igusarov

gvozd said:


> "Справа обратите внимание на церковь"
> This sentence is mere gibberish. What's that mean?


I perceive it as: "Of all the things on your right, this church is worth looking at".


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## gvozd

igusarov said:


> I perceive it as: "Of all the things on your right, this church is worth looking at".



Справа - это наречие места. Оно подразумевает наличие глагола "находиться", который может быть опущен. 

Обратите внимание на церковь (находящуюся, стоящую) справа. Логика есть.
Справа обратите внимание на церковь. Здесь "находиться" или производное от него причастие никак и никуда не вставишь. 

То, что вы написали по-английски, по-русски звучит примерно так: "Из всех предметов (находящихся) справа (от вас), наибольшего внимания достойна вон та церковь".


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## Evgeniy

gvozd said:


> No. A native speaker of Russian can't say "Справа обратите внимание на церковь".


I agree that a native speaker of Russian cannot write that, at least in his best mind. But he or she can say that (in which case, by the way, whether the comma is placed or not indeed does not matter, as we do not pronounce commas aloud). Just imagine yourself there, in a company with the tourists and the guide, and you will see how possible it is.


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## Kenga

Evgeniy said:


> I agree that a native speaker of Russian cannot write that, at least in his best mind. But he or she can say that (in which case, by the way, whether the comma is placed or not indeed does not matter, as we do not pronounce commas aloud). Just imagine yourself there, in a company with the tourists and the guide, and you will see how possible it is.


If he or she says that, it is supposed to be "Справа. Обратите внимание на церковь." Actually, we prounonce commas. As a pause between two words. )


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## Evgeniy

Kenga said:


> If he or she says that, it is supposed to be "Справа. Обратите внимание на церковь." Actually, we prounonce commas. As a pause between two words. )


I think that справа belongs to the same thought, and so this thought needs only one sentence. I strongly disagree with the second part; and it seems to be a very frequent mistake to employ that idea. Commas do not represent anything of what is present in spoken speech, they signify only the logical structure of the sentence. The logical structure being given, one can pronounce the sentence any way one likes, the commas are still stuck to their places. We very usually make a pause where there is no comma, or make no pause where a comma is present; in Russian, the function of the comma is not to separate parts of the message, unlike it is in English. Often, people forget about this rule, which is most likely why punctuation is so terrible on the Internet, even while spelling is so good…


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## Word Eater

I can add that the phrase "Справа, обратите внимание на церковь." may exist with the following meaning: "Вы, (те, кто) справа, обратите своё внимание на церковь". I imagine that the teacher might say this to address to pupils on the right side who don't pay attention.  "You, guys, on the right". But, of course, this is a very specific situation.


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## Kenga

Evgeniy said:


> I think that справа belongs to the same thought,  and so this thought needs only one sentence. I strongly disagree with  the second part; and it seems to be a very frequent mistake to employ  that idea. Commas do not represent anything of what is present in spoken  speech, they signify only the logical structure of the sentence. The  logical structure being given, one can pronounce the sentence any way  one likes, the commas are still stuck to their places. We very usually  make a pause where there is no comma, or make no pause where a comma is  present; in Russian, the function of the comma is not to separate parts  of the message, unlike it is in English. Often, people forget about this  rule, which is most likely why punctuation is so terrible on the  Internet, even while spelling is so good…



'Commas do not represent anything...' and '_Sometimes_ commas do not represent anything...' are two different things. )))

"В конкретных речевых ситуациях пунктуация помогает выявить структуру,  смысл и интонацию письменной речи. Принципы действуют, как правило,  одновременно. Но с точки зрения функциональной значимости они  неравнозначны. В тех случаях, например, когда интонационное членение  предложения не совпадает с его грамматическим членением, знаки  подчиняются принципу семантико-синтаксическому, а интонация не  принимается во внимание. Например, несовпадение интонации и пунктуации  заключается всегда в том, что знак имеется там, где требует этого  грамматическое строение предложения, а не интонационная пауза.Однако в тех случаях, когда возможно разное разбиение структуры  предложения (и следовательно, разное осмысление), именно знак,  поставленный «по интонации», оказывается решающим для осмысления  предложения. Например, в предложениях _Она говорила долго только о нем_ и _Она говорила долго, только о нем_ разный смысл: в первом – «о других говорила, но мало», во втором – «о других вообще не говорила»."​
Definitely, a _literate _native speaker of Russian cannot say "Справа обратите внимание на церковь." Otherwise it means that he or she doesn't understand that 'справа' is linked with 'церковь' semantically and this word should be placed directly after 'церковь'.


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## Maroseika

Kenga said:


> Definitely, a _literate _native speaker of Russian cannot say "Справа обратите внимание на церковь." Otherwise it means that he or she doesn't understand that 'справа' is linked with 'церковь' semantically and this word should be placed directly after 'церковь'.



I don't think this phrase might be indicative of illiteracy. Inversion, especially supported by the due intonation and/or gesture, is widely spread in Russian. As already suggested, the guide might mean that the church was one of the notable objects in the right from the tourists. 
Inversion here is very well explained by the specificity of the bus excursion: guides usually point to the object and only then name it, letting the toursts to glance at it before it disappears from their view, or otherwise it may be too late.


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## Pitt

Всем большое спасибо!


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## Kenga

Maroseika said:


> Inversion here is very well explained by the specificity of the bus excursion: guides usually point to the object and only then name it, letting the toursts to glance at it before it disappears from their view, or otherwise it may be too late.



Yeap. However, it does not follow that this guide's explanation may be expressed as one sentence without any punctuation. It is irrelevant to the conclusion.


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## Evgeniy

Kenga said:


> 'Commas do not represent anything...' and '_Sometimes_ commas do not represent anything...' are two different things. )))


Whether the two things are different or not is a long question. What I say is that any correspondenes between commas and speech are accidental and therefore cannot explain anything; while correspondences between logical structure and comma placement are essential and explain comma placement, like they do in the case with her talking for long time as well. Lawful, and not accidental, correspondence was what I called 'representation'.


Kenga said:


> Yeap. However, it does not follow that this  guide's explanation may be expressed as one sentence without any  punctuation. It is irrelevant to the conclusion.


Nor was that supposed to follow, Maroseika was talking of a different matter.
Now, what I said was that 1) such phrases are not supposed to be written, they are supposed to be said, 2) commas do not _represent_ anything in speech (in the sense I outlined), 3) therefore, their punctuation (i.e. here, whether to put the comma after справа or not) may be really non-important. That way, I commented on the difference between how Pitt wrote the phrase and how gvozd wrote the phrase; I said that the difference was indeed non-important. Your variant looks to me like "В одиннадцать часов вечера. Когда начнётся футбольный матч, включите телевизор.", or like "В одиннадцать вечера включите. Телевизор".

By the way, indeed not everything can be punctuated properly; consider: "Жена, не зная про беду, сама купаться захотела, но ноги милого в пруду она узрев окаменела". Here, two verbal constructs are interwined, which makes impossible their separation without breaking the inner construct by an element of the construct of the higher level. A topic for a thread on its own, though.


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## igusarov

Maroseika said:


> I don't think this phrase might be indicative of illiteracy. Inversion, especially supported by the due intonation and/or gesture, is widely spread in Russian.


Having thought about this phrase a bit more, I'm not at all sure that  inversion is involved... See:

"В Сан-Франциско сходите на Ломбардскую улицу".
"В Торжке отведай пожарских котлет".
"Дома сделайте себе чая с малиной".

Each of them looks like some sort of advise: what to do if/when you find yourself at a certain place. None of them look neither illiterate, nor colloquial to me. And "справа обратите внимание на церковь" sounds no different...


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## Evgeniy

igusarov said:


> "В Сан-Франциско сходите на Ломбардскую улицу".
> "В Торжке отведай пожарских котлет".
> "Дома сделайте себе чая с малиной".


This issue does not have to do with the word order _per se_, it has to do with application of adjuncts into relationships, that are signified by verbs or by other means. In all your examples, verbs denote actions, which can be done in places, so places play a natural role in those relationships of things that the verbs signify. The verb обратите does not mean such an action, that enterprise should not be done _somewhere_, so справа should not be united with this verb into one semantic structure. When справа is at the end, we have instead a compund церковь справа; when справа is in the beginning, this compound cannot be perceived either, because the word справа is placed to belong to a larger group. That larger group is easily left implied in spoken speech, but in written speech something cogent needs to be written explicitly: интересные вещи творятся справа, обратите внимание на церковь. Of course, since the place of the action is not bound to be defined by the place of the main wilful actor, справа may also belong to the main clause, but this usage is too stretched for fluent (плавной) written conversation.


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## mari_ko

Pitt said:


> Hello,
> 
> I'd like to know if both sentences are correct:
> 
> *1 Cправа, обратите внимание, церковь.
> 2 Cправа, обратите внимание  на церковь.
> *
> Thanks in advance!



The second answer is better.

But I think both of them are correct.


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## Evgeniy

mari_ko said:


> The second answer is better.


Well, I had at once the opposite impression: the first phrase was nice and guidy (i.e. proper for a tour guide, even before I knew the context was exactly a tour), and the second phrase was just some mistake. In fact, half this discussion concerned the question whether it is good to say that sentence in a tour, or it is too illiterate.


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