Since this is a concrete question about は and が I thought I'd put it in a fresh topic rather than letting it get lost in the more theoretical thread...

So, the start of Kawabata's short-story version of 雪国 begins:

Quote:国境の長いとんねるを抜けると雪国であった。夜の底が白くなった。信号所に汽車が止まった。

向側の座席から娘が立って来て、島村の前のカラソ窓を落とした。雪の冷気が流れこんだ。[etc]

Mostly I don't have any particular は vs が problems -- the stuff I read matches my subconscious mental model, and it all makes sense without my having to think particularly. However, the が in the third sentence (信号所に...) here threw me a bit. The train (or 島村, who is sitting in it) is presumably the unstated subject of 抜ける; we already know about it; why has Kawabata used が here? (rather than something like 汽車は信号所に止まった) ? Any suggestions?

Both は and が produce grammatically correct sentences. They just have different meanings. When viewed out of context, it is impossible to say which is 'right', but in the context of the story は would be weird.

With が, it's just a simple "train stopped at signal station." = "(unspecified) train stopped at (unspecified) signal station.

if は was used, it would be more like "as for the train, it stopped at signal station" or "the train stopped at signal station". But this is the first mention of the train so it seems weird to specify it in this way.

the first two sentences make no mention of a train.

I think.

nadiatims Wrote:if は was used, it would be more like "as for the train, it stopped at signal station" or "the train stopped at signal station". But this is the first mention of the train so it seems weird to specify it in this way.

I note that the English translation (by Giles Murray from _Exploring Japanese Literature_) does indeed use 'the train' rather than 'a train'; that's also the way I'd understand the sense of the passage: we're talking about the train that has just come through the tunnel and emerged into snow country, not some unspecified other train.

汽車を止める。
汽車が止まる。

警察は駅にあの汽車を止めた。
この汽車が信号所に止まった。

Ga is used because it is intransitive/passive.

Edit:

pm215 Wrote:we're talking about the train that has just come through the tunnel and emerged into snow country, not some unspecified other train.

I want to point out, also, that it's never stated explicitly that a train comes out of the tunnel.

ropsta Wrote:汽車を止める。
汽車が止まる。

警察は駅にあの汽車を止めた。
この汽車が信号所に止まった。

Ga is used because it is intransitive/passive.

That explains が vs. を, but not が vs. は. は can be used with transitive, passive, intransitive, and active sentences.

I don't have any kind of grammatical chops, but I've been puzzling about this, and I looked up a paper on translations of those first few sentences which was interesting but didn't reveal much about は and が.

So I got to thinking, and this is pure speculation, maybe there's a kind of cinematic technique here. The point of view is located inside the train--you see the dark of the tunnel, and then you come out to the tunnel into the snow country, and you see the gleam of the snow on the ground. And it's only then that the camera zooms out to reveal the train stopped at the signal light. We take the train as implied, and it is, but it's not until that moment that we see the train from the outside...

I may be thinking too hard, though.

Fillanzea Wrote:I looked up a paper on translations of those first few sentences which was interesting but didn't reveal much about は and が.

Could you give a reference to that? Thanks...

http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/bungaku/ronshu65/04.pdf

yudantaiteki Wrote:That explains が vs. を, but not が vs. は. は can be used with transitive, passive, intransitive, and active sentences.

Yes, true. However in this case he's describing an action the train performs, thus ga is perfectly natural. Even if he had explicitly mentioned the train beforehand が止まった conveys more a feeling of action/expression than 汽車は (or at least I think so).