Re: 「は」　vs. or not vs. 「が」

Paul D wrote:
On 2006-12-25 10:35:53 +0900, muchan <muchan@xxxxxxxxxxx> said:

（Ｃｉｎｄｙさんは自分の頭でとことん考えたほうがいいから、読まなくてい いです。
　待ってると考えちゃってこっちが眠れなくなるから残りの読者と自分自身の ために書きます。）

Every time a thread about 「は」　vs. 「が」 on s.l.j, my standpoint was
"there is not vs.", that 「は」　itself is not subject marker, so thinking
vs., _is_ wrong.


Paul, this part was the most important part of my message.
I wish you understand why i say "thinking vs., _is_ wrong".

I will explain it _again_ in later message.
(I was thinking how to write about it, before and after sleeping...)

Native speakers learned their usage subconciously, when they/we were
young, and while talking, we don't make concious decision which one to use.
(It's mainly the dilemma of SVO language speakers, when thinking in their
language and say it in Japanese, you need to decide which one to use for the
subject.) Problem is that NSoJ makes decision
subconciously, that often they can't explain what happens in our head
while speaking, correctly chosing 「は」 or 「が」 .

Language learners need to develop the same intuition, but the process is obviously more difficult, requiring not just lots of input but also an *understanding* of what the rules that apply are.


Yes, true, and I was repeating that rule...
(i.e. learn many usage of 「は」, use it whenever need, otherwise,
put 「が」on _only_ grammatical Subject.)

My current, still-limited, understanding of は and が is summed up in the following rules:

ha: topic, which persists until a new topic is presented
ga: grammatical subject of sentence or clause


Here problem is, when a topic is at the same time topic and the grammatical
Subject, you use 「は」, that is if 「は」 is used or not is completely
independent of wheather it is subject or not. If can be object.

ha: refers to something that is visible or has already been mentioned (like "the" in English)
ga: presents a new item (like "a" in English)


My definite answer is, Japanese grammer can not be explained by English
grammer. You may find some similarity, but using it (or depend on it)
to decide which one to use it is the Evil of all the mistakes later.
Those who wrote it first in textbook should not teach Japanese.

ha: emphasizes what comes after
ga: emphasizes what comes before


I don't know what you talk about here.
And it comes from "vs." thinking. probably from comparaison of narrow
case of 「は」, in the sentences both could be used.

ha: "トムは行きました" -> answers the question "and what did Tom do?" contrasting Tom with other people.

"トムは行きました" doesn't answer anything. just talking about Tom who
went.

ga: "トムがいきました" -> answers the question "who went?"

"トムがいきました" can be used for answering the question "who went?"
That is, when saying "トムがいきました", トム is not topic.
(You can think, that いきました is Topic and トムが as predicative.)


There are still uses I find hard to categorize, like が when used with an object , e.g.「日本語ができますよ」, or は in some verb constructions. I suspect the former falls under the emphatic function of が.

Paul D.


「は」has many usages, it's hard to summarize in a sentence, (so I say
"you need to learn what 「は」is". But 「が」doesn't have many usages.
As its historical origin, it is sometimes used as posessive, but
in most of cases, it's just Subject case marker. Then, like above
case of できる, or 好きだ, you just learn which case a word is
_treated_as_the_Subject_ in Japanese. 「が」is still subject marker,
and 「は」can be used anywhere if it is Topic.

So again, they have functions of different layer of grammer.
So never "vs.", (and whenever vs, in the same sentence, 「は」wins., :)
「は」wins over 「が」and 「を」, rest of cases it's attached like 「には」
「では」「とは」... and 「も」beats even 「は」. :) Have you ever notice
that トムも in "トムもいきました" is also the subject? Why don't you
start a new thread 「も」vs.「が」? ;)

muchan

.

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