Re: How many subjects are allowed?

muchan wrote: 
Bart Mathias wrote:

[...]
Consider that, foolish person that I am, I don't like nattou. But I know my daughter likes it, and there are 423,786--maybe even more--people in Japan who do like it.

Can I truthfully say 納豆が好きだ?

If (私) is not the topic of that sentence, then what is it?


...who said "私 is not the topic of that sentence"? ...

In the quote I said "About the _subject_ of 好きです"... 

And that's why I wrote the rest of what I wrote.

Can something be topic if it could not in other circumstances be subject?

誰が納豆が好きか。

僕が好きだ。

[...]


the Topic(s) can be the subject, the object, or whatever else...
Or more exactly, the subject, the object, or whatever else, can be the topic(s). 

OK, that's something I will probably never believe.

If you want to say that "ga" is used with something wichi is not subject,
(possible, IMHO) or anything that can be topic (revolutional view, IMHO)
the discussion will be very interesting...

From the time of my dissertation, I have tended to write of "ga-complements" rather than "subjects" becasue that term can be troublesome, but I would none the less hesitate to say が can be used with non-subjects, except in certain lexical items such as ところが = "however" or それが like when one is trying to weasel out of taking the blame or something. (And clause-final use doesn't make the clause a subject, probably.)

If the full statement of the "revolutional" view is my idea that only words representing things which are also the subjects of sentences can be topics, I might soon get bored with the discussion.

Would you hold that 僕が in 僕が[納豆が]好きだ is a topic? Or, if not, and it's not a subject, what then is it?

[p...]
(Every declarative or interrogative sentence also has a topic.)


If "implicit topic" or "unsaid topic" is topic, or "empty topic" is also
topic, I can easily agree you, that every sentence has a topic.

I've had to use a sort of "empty topic" notion for sentences like 雨が 降ってる. Interestingly, the first word in the English "It's raining" is uttered with topic-marking intonation, and I feel that in some sense when we say that we are really talking about "it" (more hocus pocus than science, I suppose), so I analyze the Japanese sentence as (IT[-wa](ame-ga (hutte-ru))). The Japanese word for "IT" is "" so there's nothing to attach a は to.

(Also works for Japanese versions of "It's Japan where it's men who's life spans are short.")

... are long, but just shorter than women... 

And I bet Kuno knew that when he made up the Japanese sentence.

Bart

muchan 
.

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