There's not much of a difference.    There's a preference for が in relative clauses that contain other の's, and also when using の could create ambiguity between the possessive/descriptive の and the subordinate-clause-が-alternate の.

I have a feeling that a lot of this is simply idiomatic, so you may just have to learn where native speakers tend to use の -- google says that やりがいのある仕事 outnumbers やりがいがある仕事 by about 3:1.

I don't recall ever seeing any detailed explanation, in a grammar book or linguistics paper, about this difference.

That may be a different case because that's one of the times where の can be analyzed as either a possessive (Somebody's forgotten children shoes) or the replacement of が (Children shoes that somebody forgot).  Native speakers might have a preference for one reading over the other, though.

In other cases like 目の大きい子供, the possessive reading is impossible (or at least extremely improbable), so there may be less of a difference between の and が in those cases.

Last edited by yudantaiteki (2009 December 09, 3:46 pm)

I keep seeing this kinda thing come up where they use の where you'd expect something else. I'm slowly absorbing it and coming to terms with it that way