You're not breaking up the sentence correctly.

It should be read:

(トムがフットボールの切符をあげた) (女の子)

Literally, "the football ticket(s) that tom gave" and "girl"
Which together means "the girl that Tom gave the football tickets to".

Last edited by chamcham (2009 October 01, 12:05 pm)

This is one of the most irritating quirks of Japanese to native speakers of Indoeuropean languages. 

食べた人 probably means "the person who ate,"
食べたりんご probably means "the apple missing-subject ate," or "the apple that was eaten," but
怪獣が食べた人 means "the person whom the monster ate," and
怪獣を食べた人 means "the person who ate the monster."

Japanese doesn't have relative pronouns.  So, it's not explicitly stated what case (subject, object, indirect object, instrument, etc.) the described noun-phrase takes.  Oh well.  It's almost always clear from context, so don't worry about it.

wildweathel wrote:

This is one of the most irritating quirks of Japanese to native speakers of Indoeuropean languages. 

食べた人 probably means "the person who ate,"
食べたりんご probably means "the apple missing-subject ate," or "the apple that was eaten," but
怪獣が食べた人 means "the person whom the monster ate," and
怪獣を食べた人 means "the person who ate the monster."

Japanese doesn't have relative pronouns.  So, it's not explicitly stated what case (subject, object, indirect object, instrument, etc.) the described noun-phrase takes.  Oh well.  It's almost always clear from context, so don't worry about it.

Thanks a lot for the post.

Looks like it comes down to context again. If that's the case then I guess I'll just have to get on with it. I'd actually be pleased if the likes of あげた女の子 could be seen as either "the girl that gave" or "the girl that is given" as it originally struck me as the former yet turned out to be the latter. I guess I hadn't missed anything gramatically, I just wasn't looking at the context right.

yudantaiteki wrote:

Virtua_Leaf wrote:

I'd actually be pleased if the likes of あげた女の子 could be seen as either "the girl that gave" or "the girl that is given" as it originally struck me as the former yet turned out to be the latter. I guess I hadn't missed anything grammatically, I just wasn't looking at the context right.

Right, either one is possible -- and actually, speaking from a purely grammatical standpoint, it could also mean "The girl that was given".  When you just have verb + noun, the verb can have almost any relation to the noun that makes sense.  It doesn't even have to be a subject or object; 買った店 can mean "the store where I bought [something]".

Ooh, 買った店 is the type of thing that throws me. I definitely think my Japanese will improve tenfold if I can get the hang of this.

In it's simplest form, I've come to realise that verb + noun basically represents the noun being described/modified by that verb. But from that I've made a few observations (might be completely wrong here, but)...

intransitive verb + noun = the verb describes the state of the noun

transitive verb + noun = A) the noun is the agent, the verb is what it does/ did. B) The noun is the one affected by that verb. To decide which is which I guess context must be used (is the noun animate/inanimate? etc.).

motion verb + noun = the noun did the motion

Also, I see some other which perhaps fall out of any of that:

英語で書く基本が身につく本

Here I sort of take it as something like the following sentence is presupposed between つく and 本:

ことが出来るようにならせる