I think if you went live on the news in Japan and announced to them they can just completely forget about が they'd probably be a little bit unimpressed.

Anyways, what on earth does it matter? It's almost like debating what "get, have, on, off" mean in English when they're used like "get in a fight, turn the light on and off, have an argument"... it's like if you told all westerners they're just being silly and they can drop those words entirely then that's fine. Haha.

I'm exaggerating a little here but the linguistics side of things just really doesn't matter. There's no real need to be able to define Japanese particles in English. They sorta mean something but not really it's what they come to make the sentence mean as a whole that's important. For that all you need to know is how to use it. It's taken a very long time for particles to sink in for me but I can definitely tell it's starting to happen now.

mezbup Wrote:I'm exaggerating a little here but the linguistics side of things just really doesn't matter.

I disagree. All good explanations of grammar, even ones that have been simplified a lot for learners, are ultimately based on linguistic analysis.

Quote:There's no real need to be able to define Japanese particles in English. They sorta mean something but not really it's what they come to make the sentence mean as a whole that's important. For that all you need to know is how to use it.

But how do you know how to use it without explanations? I'm always extremely suspicious of non-native speakers who can't explain grammar but say they know how to use it, especially with very fundamental and often used things like は and が (I'm not saying that you should be able to give a linguistic explanation of 100% of uses, but if you can't even explain the basics of how the particles work, I think there's a good chance you're misusing them in at least some cases.)

I think that for most people (myself included), with a topic as complicated and as different from English as は and が is, it's very unlikely that you will be able to figure out the usage correctly just from seeing it used in sentences. On the flip side, just reading English explanations will not enable you to understand it either. Both are needed.

EDIT: I mentioned this in another thread, One of my primary reasons for saying this is the extremely humbling experience of having to teach the grammar from Japanese: The Spoken Language and go through their explanations, and realize how spotty my grammatical understanding actually wa. There were so many things that I thought I had figured out just from experience, when it turned out that I either had incomplete or in some cases totally wrong understandings of the grammar.

は is an evolved form of conditional ば. I left my classical texts in Canada otherwise I'd have a reference.

As for your claim that subject in classical was marked with <nothing>, I don't think so, but I have no classical material on hand so unless you share something I cannot continue that line of discussion.

Also worth nothing is just how classical you are talking about. Edo-period Japanese is still considered modern. I'm talking Heian period.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:I'm exaggerating a little here but the linguistics side of things just really doesn't matter.

I disagree. All good explanations of grammar, even ones that have been simplified a lot for learners, are ultimately based on linguistic analysis.

Quote:There's no real need to be able to define Japanese particles in English. They sorta mean something but not really it's what they come to make the sentence mean as a whole that's important. For that all you need to know is how to use it.

But how do you know how to use it without explanations? I'm always extremely suspicious of non-native speakers who can't explain grammar but say they know how to use it, especially with very fundamental and often used things like は and が (I'm not saying that you should be able to give a linguistic explanation of 100% of uses, but if you can't even explain the basics of how the particles work, I think there's a good chance you're misusing them in at least some cases.)

I think that for most people (myself included), with a topic as complicated and as different from English as は and が is, it's very unlikely that you will be able to figure out the usage correctly just from seeing it used in sentences. On the flip side, just reading English explanations will not enable you to understand it either. Both are needed.

EDIT: I mentioned this in another thread, One of my primary reasons for saying this is the extremely humbling experience of having to teach the grammar from Japanese: The Spoken Language and go through their explanations, and realize how spotty my grammatical understanding actually wa. There were so many things that I thought I had figured out just from experience, when it turned out that I either had incomplete or in some cases totally wrong understandings of the grammar.

I do agree both are needed. Although no matter how many times I read about に and tried to understand it's uses/meaning it just wasn't happening so I've let it sink in and yeah I could give a vague description but definitely not 100% accurate linguistically list all it's uses and what not. But I think that's good enough if you can sum something up to it's most basic level like a native english speaker who's never studied grammar, if you gave them a sentence and asked them what each word is doing they'd be able to explain the grammar bits what they mean with a basic definition that shows an understanding. I don't know how long it's been since I read definitions of は and　が probably 10 or so months but right now I'm paying really close attention to how they're used and it's slowly starting to sink in and make sense.

As a side note, the recent post of seeing は as a : I've found quite useful in certain situations where as an English speaker you just wouldn't think it would be used but it is.

Anyway, definitions are useful, being able to define things yourself right down to every last detail isn't as useful. Definitions help I won't debate that but it does also take time for it to really sink in.

~3 years, depending on how you define "started studying".

@mezbup:

I think deep linguistic knowledge is important & necessary, but I don't think that is how one should learn the basics of language in the first place. It is something one should come back to once they have a decent grasp of the language, to get them to that next level. I feel the same about classical Japanese. To really understand where Japanese is now you have to understand where it was. It's too bad I don't have more time to study it because it's incredibly fascinating digging through it and finding out where stuff came from and how stuff we take for granted like "~nai, ha, ga, etc" at one point didn't exist as concepts in and of themselves. You can also impress the weird girls majoring in Japanese who are in love with Genji and Basho by reading it in the original. I somewhat envy 油断大敵 since he gets to study etymology of kanji as a graduate student (iirc). I'd love to do a masters on Japanese historical linguistics, but I'd rather start making money

Getting back on track, most English Japanese learning material dumbs down grammar far too much, to the point of making it HARDER to learn (conjugation is a good example). The problem is that there are no beginner level textbooks meant for SERIOUS students, and a teacher can't teach a class out of reference material without doing a LOT of work by themselves. Also, most non-textbook Japanese books are meant for someone even less serious than a student - someone with a casual interest.

は / が are taught throughout an introductory language course. Especially が.
Tae Kim calls が the identifier particle.
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/particles.html <- a page everyone has been to sometime or other

The following was posted by someone over at How-to-Learn-Any-Language.com:

Quote:一． emphasize 「what」: 机の上に「本が」あります。

二． emphasize 「where」: その本は「机の上に」あります。

三． interrogatives that are used in asking questions: 「だれが」行きますか。「私が」行きます。

四． interrogatives come after 「は」: 山田先生は「どなた」ですか。山田先生は「 この方」です。

五． describe natural phenomenon: 「春が」来ました。「雨が」降ります。「花 が」咲きます。

六． describe universal truths or objective properties: 地球「は」丸い。猫「は」鼠を捕えるもので す。

七． describe things that are happening in front of your eyes: あっ、バス「が」来た。子供たち「が」公園 で遊んでいます。

八． by comparison: 「お酒は」飲みますが、「たばこは」吸いま せん。「日本語は」できますが、「フランス 語は」できません。

九． the subjects are different: 「わたしが」嫁に行くとき、「母は」泣きま した。「あなたが」行けば、「わたしも」行 きます。

十． the subjects are the same: 「わたしは」水泳に行くとき、いつも弟を連 れて行く。「木村先生は」本を読むとき、い つもめがねをかけました。

十一． emphasize who/what/which: 友達がくれた本はこれです。背が高い人が来 ました。

十二． definitions or judgements: 「山田さんは」東京大学の四年生です。「Ｎ ＨＫというのは」日本放送協会のことです。

十三． the result of the comparison: 冬は東京より北京の方が寒い。夏子より純子 の方が背が高い。

十四． ability ／ desire ／ feeling: 田中さんは英語が分かる。わたしはコーヒー が飲みたい。気分が悪い。

十五． main subject「は」／ second subject「が」: 日本は山が多い。象は鼻が長い。わたしは歌 が上手です。

Ha/ga is of course taught in every introductory course. The problem is that it is rarely taught well.

That list is an example of being poorly taught. It is presented as an exhaustive list of the meanings of ga/ha, but it's just a random collection of examples with no particular organization and no explanation (2-3 words is not an explanation).

IceCream: I started studying in 1999 so I'm over 10 years now.

Jarvik: You are exactly right; the premise of most books is that in-depth grammar explanations aren't necessary, it's better just to load up on grammar and kanji with the idea that grammar will sort of come naturally as you progress. Japanese: The Spoken Language is the only textbook series I know of that actually has very good grammatical explanations (at times a little too detailed; the textbook is actually cited in many linguistic papers).

My classical knowledge is mostly Heian since my PhD topic is the Tale of Genji (although I'm also reading some Edo and Kamakura commentaries).

Quote:は is an evolved form of conditional ば. I left my classical texts in Canada otherwise I'd have a reference.

I looked at my dictionaries and materials and was unable to find anything saying either way; like I said, は and ば are clearly related, but given that both topic-marking and contrastive は show up in the Man'youshu, if は did develop out of ば, it happened before Japanese started getting written down.

Quote:As for your claim that subject in classical was marked with <nothing>, I don't think so, but I have no classical material on hand so unless you share something I cannot continue that line of discussion.

Well, I said that was one possible way to mark subject, and I think the most often used. I mostly got that notion from one of my classical Japanese professors, but here are some examples of null-particle subjects in classical.

(I apologize to non classical Japanese people, just skip the rest of this post

Here's the opening paragraph of Taketori Monogatari:
今は昔、竹取の翁といふものありけり。野山にまじりて、竹を取りつゝ、萬づの事に使ひけり。名をば讃岐造麿となむいひける。その竹の中に、本光る竹一筋ありけり。怪しがりて寄りて見るに、筒の中光りたり。それを見れば、三寸ばかりなる人、いと美しうて居たり。翁いふやう、「われ朝夕毎に見る竹の中に、おはするにて知りぬ。子になり給ふべき人なめり」とて、手に打入れて家に持ちて來ぬ。妻の嫗に預けて養はす。美しきこと限りなし。いと幼ければ籠に入れて養ふ。

Almost every sentence here has a null-particle subject. もの + ありけり, 竹 + ありけり, 筒の中 + 光たり, 人 + 美しうていたり, 翁 + いふ, and われ + 見る.

Many of the Ise Monogatari sections begin with something like 昔、男ありけり (rather than 男はありけり).

Looking at Genji (I'll pick the Yugao chapter), there are more examples:
惟光、日頃ありて参れり。
君うち笑みたまひて
中将の君、御供に参る。
惟光、いささかのことも御心に違はじと思ふに
右近、艶なる心地して
And more.

derr, my classical must be somewhat cobbwebby if I forgot about むかしをとこありけり, especially since I did a grammatical analysis of 伊勢物語 on a classical final

Yudantaiteki's view of null particles is a new approach.

The more common use of null particles is just a way to talk about something that has been dropped, not a unique particle in and of itself.

I haven't read any papers about the 'new approach', but I don't how see the bear example above can possibly jive with it, since the null particle would have 3 completely different meanings with no way to tell which one it was. What exactly does the null particle provide in this instance?

The classical example lends credence, but the lack of が particles without dropping having occurred seems to come at the expense of more rigid sentence structure. (ex: をとこ、むかしありけり may be incorrect. I certainly don't want to make prescriptions about long dead language without analyzing more texts and having my reference book with me though ) So there may not be a null particle, but rather meaning given by word order.

Quote:Yudantaiteki's view of null particles is a new approach.

It's not that new; it's largely based on JSL's explanation, which was published in 1987.

Quote:So there may not be a null particle, but rather meaning given by word order.

The object can also be linked to the verb directly. Offhand I don't know any examples where *both* subject and object are linked to the verb directly with no particles, but I wouldn't be surprised if they exist.

The role of が in classical Japanese is somewhat debated, but its role in subject-marking is extremely limited, if it exists at all. Even if you accepted some uses of が as subject-marking, the null particle uses in Heian Japanese are significantly more common than が.

As for the bear example, this is how I understand the possible meanings:
熊食べる? Do you eat bear? OR Does the bear eat? (no special emphasis)
熊は食べる？Do you eat bear (contrast/topic) OR Does the bear eat (contrast/topic)?
熊を食べる？ Is bear the thing that you eat? (emphasis on kuma)
熊が食べる？Is the bear the one who eats? (emphasis on kuma)
(of course all of these can mean "Will..." future tense instead of habitual)
But it's really hard to talk about these things without specific contexts for each one, and in some cases the differences may be so slight that they're not apparent (particularly between the null and が/を)

Jarvik7 Wrote:noun<emphasizer> verb still makes no sense. What is the relationship of the noun to the verb?

bear eat.

Is the bear eating or being eaten?

BEEEAAAARRRR eat

still ambiguous

bear が eat

Ok, now we know the bear is doing the eating.

As long as the syntax is a consistent and accepted one, bear ear could just a well tell you which is going to be eaten.

Bear eat man.

Man eat bear.

Man, bear eat.

Bear, man eat. (this is syntax is understandable if you study japones or maybe corean)

There are instances where each particle can be omitted, I guess.

Whew, finally read every post in this thread. I am now fluent in Classical Japanese.

ruiner Wrote:Whew, finally read every post in this thread. I am now fluent in Classical Japanese.

Agreed.
___

I do think that after studying for a few years you just have a 'feel' for which one is right. And of course you are going to make mistakes when using it. Most of us are native English speakers, not native Japanese. Same thing could be said for 'the & a' in English, or redundant words that aren't needed but still make their way into the language eg. 'He got off of the boat' vs. 'He got off the boat'. It's just one of those things.

ruiner Wrote:Whew, finally read every post in this thread. I am now fluent in Classical Japanese.

Seriously!? I didn't even know there was a second page until after I posted.

I think the easiest way to learn が/は is to read a barrage of short conversation in which each is used. Finding the barrage is a hard one.

How about instead of several topics on the subject of ga/ha there is just one stickied thread (or link to a wiki) with endless example conversations (corrected by some of the more experienced people and/or provided by natives themselves).

I don't ever plan to formally study classical Japanese, but it's fascinating to look at the language in an older form and observe the differences. Sort of like an appreciation for books written 200 years ago in the English language.... or even Shakespeare (although that's arguably an even greater leap from the modern English language)

bennyb Wrote:I don't ever plan to formally study classical Japanese, but it's fascinating to look at the language in an older form and observe the differences. Sort of like an appreciation for books written 200 years ago in the English language.... or even Shakespeare (although that's arguably an even greater leap from the modern English language)

All I can say is that I am so glad we do not speak Early Modern English

As I said, I just don't think it's an either-or situation. It shouldn't be read conversations *instead* of a grammar explanation, it should be both.

は and が are still a hot topic in Japanese linguistics. So I think it'd be better to pick your favorite explanation that you think works well and forget about it as soon as possible. Every grammar rule available at this moment is wrong. Some are less wrong, I know. But it doesn't matter if you ask me.

As for dropping particles, it's really a tough question. For example, you can easily guess what are left out in these examples:

太郎、どこ行った？ (は would be the most logical one.),
学校行ったよ (Native speakers would say it's に.),
雨、降ってきたよ (Probably が),
あ、洗濯物しまわなくちゃ (Putting を after 洗濯物 doesn't change the meaning).

Certainly the nuances are slightly different because the rhythm is different. But the difference in meaning/nuance is not as big as these examples:

はさみ、ある？
この店、おいしいんだ
ぼく、さびしいな

You can't add は, が or any other particle in these sentences without changing their meanings. So the null particle thing isn't that simple. If you're interested, these examples are from here.

One thing you might be interested in is that Japanese people with congenital hearing impairment are also having trouble understanding the difference between は and が. They switch around は and が like non-native speakers who learned Japanese from reading books. The "books" I'm talking about includes every sort of book: not only dictionaries and grammars.

The implication of this isn't clear. It could be that humans need sounds to learn some aspects of a natural language, that grammar rules about は and が in textbooks are too crappy to be useful, or something else. But if you're learning Japanese through reading, it doesn't bode well; you're doing the exact same thing as deaf people who find は and が confusing.

yudantaiteki Wrote:my PhD topic is the Tale of Genji

Awesome. It's the greatest light novel in the world, isn't it? I know several Japanese girls who love the Tale of Genji. They even visited the tomb of the author. They're also the kind of people who play eroge, read nerdy manga, and draw doujin. Who would have imagined the first light novel ever written in the world would still be used as a template of moe stories in light novels, manga, anime, visual novels, eroges, etc in 21 century? The female author sure is the inventor of moe, tsundere, yandere, loli, shota, yaoi, rape fetish and many other things in the Japanese subculture. She did it more than 1,000 years ago in extremely high quality to the extent that her work is considered to be the magnum opus in the history of Japanese novel. It's just awesome.

Maybe there's something I'm just not getting, but I really don't think は／が is that complicated. Can anyone give an example where the following rules aren't enough for complete understanding:

が defines preceding word as the agent of the verb. ie the thing verbing or being verbed (in the case of passive verbs)

は defines the preceding word as topic. ie what you're talking about. Translatable as "as for X" or "regarding X", or thinking of it as a "," as I suggested a while ago in the other は／が thread.
eg: 冬は雪が降る。= winter, snow fall. = In winter snow falls.
I would argue btw that the second translation step into elegant english is entirely pointless unless you're actually doing translation work.

[edit: i didn't see Ice cream had already responded. Also, I should have written "inadequate (relative to other simplified explanations)" instead of "incomplete". None are complete.]

nadiatims, I agree that it's important to have a basic understanding of the role of Topic and Subject and of sentence structure, but it's not enough. As I mentioned in that earlier thread, it's not that your explanation is incorrect, it's just [incomplete].
For example:

*It doesn't help answer the question whether to use は　or が　when the Topic = Subject. It doesn't always help us interpret the significance when one is used rather than the other.
*Substituting the term "Agent" to avoid any confusion between "Topic" and "Subject" isn't ideal. It's likely to give the wrong impression that a Subject always has agency or ability to act. So a sentence like あの女の子は髪の毛が長い might confuse some learners. If you need to add the explanation that adjectives can be like verbs, etc., then we might as well just stick with a reminder that "Subject" is a grammar term and isn't used in the general sense of sentence subject matter. Or perhaps choose a different term altogether and refer to predicate rather than verb?
*Your explanation doesn't touch on any of the related uses of が and は, such as contrastive.

I think a combination of exposure and a *gradually* more refined understanding is required.

Magamo's example of hearing impaired folks having trouble with certain particles is interesting. It reminded me of a small study comparing the spoken Japanese of two groups of university students who had studied for 4 years - one group had studied in Japan for one year and the other hadn't. There were a handful of notable differences between the 2 groups. One difference that surprised me was that the Japan group, despite a year of listening and speaking, were less able to use particles correctly than the group who stayed home with their books. The book only learning group spoke more haltingly, but made fewer particle errors. (The other differences related to mixing of politeness, appropriate conjunctions, vocab range, and difficulty of grammar patterns)

magamo Wrote:は and が are still a hot topic in Japanese linguistics. So I think it'd be better to pick your favorite explanation that you think works well and forget about it as soon as possible. Every grammar rule available at this moment is wrong. Some are less wrong, I know. But it doesn't matter if you ask me.

Haha, yeah.

Quote:As for dropping particles, it's really a tough question.

Yeah, I meant to add in at some point that in some cases the difference between the "null particle" and が/は/を is so slight that you might be able to consider it simply dropped.

Quote:One thing you might be interested in is that Japanese people with congenital hearing impairment are also having trouble understanding the difference between は and が. They switch around は and が like non-native speakers who learned Japanese from reading books. The "books" I'm talking about includes every sort of book: not only dictionaries and grammars.

That's very interesting -- I guess Japanese Sign Language doesn't have は/が? I know that ASL has some sort of topic marking function but I don't think it's exactly the same as は in Japanese.

Quote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:my PhD topic is the Tale of Genji

Awesome. It's the greatest light novel in the world, isn't it? I know several Japanese girls who love the Tale of Genji. They even visited the tomb of the author. They're also the kind of people who play eroge, read nerdy manga, and draw doujin. Who would have imagined the first light novel ever written in the world would still be used as a template of moe stories in light novels, manga, anime, visual novels, eroges, etc in 21 century? The female author sure is the inventor of moe, tsundere, yandere, loli, shota, yaoi, rape fetish and many other things in the Japanese subculture. She did it more than 1,000 years ago in extremely high quality to the extent that her work is considered to be the magnum opus in the history of Japanese novel. It's just awesome.

それは褒め言葉のつもりですか？

IceCream Wrote:This might be a little picky, but if you look at the sentence:
誰が来た
there's no way 誰 can be an agent, so it's making が into は.

First of all, this isn't a complete sentence, rather its a fragment of a sentence. 誰が来た？ or 誰が来たの？ or 誰が来たか分からないよ or such would all be valid. 誰 is an interrogative and it takes the same place as a subject/agent in a sentence, so I don't really understand what your point is here. I see interrogatives(疑問詞) as like 'variable agents' anyway. So saying 誰が来た？ is like saying "person X came." and the other person understands this as a request for the identity of the variable agent. It's the same in english.
"I went to school." (agent=I)
"Who went to school." (agent=who=variable and therefore the sentence is interptited as a question. Note: the question mark and change of tone are really just emphasis.)

IceCream Wrote:その上写真写りはひどい or その上写真写りがひどい
本は好き？ or 本が好き？
which should i use, according to your rule?

I'll use the book example as it's quicker to explain. In isolation, both are grammatically correct.
"本が好き？"= "book(s) like?" = "do you like books?"
"本は好き？"= "books, like?"
which could be read "as for books, do you like them?"= "how about books?" as in the following dialogue:
A:漫画が好き？ manga like (is)? = do u like manga?
B:別に not really.
A:本は(好き)？ books,(like (is))? = how about books, (do u like them)?
B:大嫌い。 I hate them.

This reminds me of a question I was asked by a colleague. She asked me:
does "これは絵美に書かれた手紙です。" equal "This is a letter written by Emi." or
"This is the letter written by Emi."

In isolation both are grammatically correct. Using a/the is dependant on context, and logic (not grammar) tells you which to use. Half the debate about は／が involves examples in which either would be grammatically correct.

Thora: in sentences like あの女の子は髪の毛が長い, I believe there is an omitted but implied word です which I think of as equivalent to is/am/are (the "be動詞") in english. So it's like "that girl, hair long is."
I'm not trying to argue by the way, but I'm kind of dumbfounded why people find this so difficult. Think of it this way, mentally retarded japanese 4 year olds probably have no problem with は/が, so there can't be such complex rules behind this stuff.

the hearing impaired thing doesn't surprise me. は／が are pretty similar sounds and the mouth movement is pretty similar. I occasionally teach hearing impaired students and depending on what frequency range different consonants occupy, they have trouble hearing/distinguishing the sounds.

*edit: kanji selection mistake

IceCream Wrote:It's also not the same in English. This isn't possible in Japanese is it? (without dropping particles)

Who Wrote:All I'm trying to find out is what's the guy's name on first base.
What's the guy's name on first base? No, what's the guy's name on second base.
Have you got a first baseman on first? Yeah.
Then who's playing first? Yeah.
You know the fella's name? Yeah.
Then who's playing first? Yeah.
The fella playing first for St. Louie. Who.
The guy on first. Who. The first baseman.
Who is on first. What are you asking me for?
Have you got a first baseman on first? Yeah.

It's not possible in English without dropping particles either .