Animosophy
Member
Registered: 2013-02-19
Posts: 180
I have a few questions/statements I'd like double checked to confirm my understanding 
わたしがいったことをしんじますか?
わたしがいったことはしんじますか?
Is the difference between these two questions somewhere along the lines of asking whether someone believes IN what I said, and believing WHAT I said, respectively?
So the 1st question translates as "as for what I said, did/do you believe it?" and the 2nd one as "[...], do you believe me?"
- The subject of a sentence can only be noun.
- Verbs cannot grammatically serve as a topic, subject, or object of a sentence, so you can't use は or が or を after a verb.
- However, more or less any verb can be "turned into" a noun with こと ([verb]-koto). Like in the two example sentences above. Hence why the を/は particles are being used after いった.
- While Japanese does have a standard sentence pattern ("Subject-Object-Verb"), it doesn't really matter what you start a sentence with so long as the particles correctly identify what's what. Oh, but emphasis is placed later in a sentence, as opposed to the beginning like in English.
Auxillary verbs. http://www.jref.com/japan/language/japa … iary_verbs
Why the hell aren't they mentioned earlier in grammar guides?! D: feels like I'd rather work backwards most of the time...
Last edited by Animosophy (2013 May 06, 9:38 am)
Animosophy wrote:
I have a few questions/statements I'd like double checked to confirm my understanding 
わたしがいったことをしんじますか?
わたしがいったことはしんじますか?
Is the difference between these two questions somewhere along the lines of asking whether someone believes IN what I said, and believing WHAT I said, respectively?
No; the difference between を and は here is hard to express in an English translation, and without context you can't really say what the difference is or which one should be used. It's hard to explain in a short time but basically:
私が言ったこと、信じますか? With no particle it's the most neutral sentence, with no particular emphasis or connotation anywhere. Formal written language does not allow the "zero particle" but it's used constantly in speech.
私が言ったことを信じますか? The を particle, like が, is typically used to mark new information that you are emphasizing. Sometimes it has a meaning close to "only" (though probably not here), and often the verb is something that's already known -- you're specifying the target of the verb.
私が言ったことは信じますか? The two normal uses of は are to mark a known topic, or to show contrast (or sometimes both). So this could be "Do you at least believe what I'm saying [even if you don't believe what I'm doing, or what other people are saying, etc.]?" Or just "The things I said [which we've already been talking about], do you believe them?"
- The subject of a sentence can only be noun.
- Verbs cannot grammatically serve as a topic, subject, or object of a sentence, so you can't use は or が or を after a verb.
More or less true -- は can go after certain conjugations of verbs but 言ったは would always be bad.
Last edited by yudantaiteki (2013 May 06, 10:03 am)