Expressing Addition

[1] “He painted 2 oil paintings, in addition to the 3 he had finished before!”
[2] “As well as/Besides buying a dress, she got herself a nice matching hat.”

In coordinate constructions [see Issue 028 of our English Corner E-zine for more information on linking sentences by coordination], the idea of addition can be expressed by 'and', or (with more emphasis) by 'not only … but (also)'. Thus we can replace example [1] above with:

“He painted 2 oil paintings, and (he painted) the 3 watercolours he had finished before!” “Not only he painted 2 oil paintings, “but (also) the 3 watercolours!”

The adverbials 'also', 'too', 'as well', and 'in addition' express the same idea: ’in addition to that’ (where 'that' points back to something mentioned earlier):

“She bought a dress; she also got herself a nice matching hat.” (i.e. ‘in addition to buying a dress’) … She got herself a nice matching hat too/as well. … In addition, she got herself a nice matching hat.

You need to note that we tend to use these adverbials in different positions in our sentences:

- 'also' usually goes in the middle of a sentence;
- 'too' and 'as well' prefer the end-position;
- 'in addition' usually sits at the beginning of a sentence.

It is possible to start a sentence with 'so', to convey 'also' or 'too' with the function of a substitute form. Only that in this case we have and inversion of the subject and the operator, as in the example below. If you don’t know about operators, you can review this topic in the grammar section of Issue 042.

“My mother likes playing cards, and so does my father.” (= ‘and my father does, too’)

There is another distinction between positive meaning, and for this we use 'so', 'too', etc.) and the negative meaning, for which we use 'neither', and 'nor'. For the negative clauses, there is also the corresponding 'any'-word and the adverb 'either', which occurs at the end of a clause.