Oh, interesting. I had always thought of trailing が・けど as cognate to trailing “but …” in English. In other words, I was under the impression が fulfilled a distinct grammatical role when preceded by a predicate. In the case of アメリカ人だ, this is a predicate, and thus a grammatically complete sentence (when properly topicalized) in Japanese.
So if I were to say, 私はアメリカ人だが、日本に住んでいる, is my living in Japan somehow a predicate of my being American? Or does this more in the direction of introducing new information? Just trying to get my hands around the idea it’s the “same が.” I get the impression that may be a key to understanding how Japanese people think about が, which I’d find very helpful.
It’s not so much a predicate as it is offering info about は. It’s one of those situations where ‘subject’ doesn’t work well for describing が. This can be visualized much easier if we do this -
私は日本に住んでいて、アメリカ人だが。
(The verb is simply a state within は, が is the only ‘important info’)
私は日本に住んでいるが、アメリカ人だ。
(Equally as correct, but now the verb is the important info.)
The only difference is that you are switching which ‘piece’ of information you think is the one that is more important to the listener.
Each sentence’s value changes based on who you are talking to, and what information they are likely to already know.
私は日本に住んでいるアメリカ人だが。
(This time everything after は is equally as important, as が presents the whole statement as something potentially unknown by the listener.)
Sorry. I have to respectfully but strongly disagree. If you have something marked by が which seems to you to be a direct object, or anything other than the subject of the sentence, that’s a clue that you are not translating it correctly. You are thinking of the sentence as an English sentence written in Japanese rather than as a Japanese sentence.
In order to make sense of the grammar in that third sentence, there are three grammar points we need to understand which probably contradict what you were taught in school:
がalways marks the subject
Verbたい (e.g. 食べたい) is an adjective, not a conjugated verb
Adjectives can “go both ways” between “active” and “passive” forms (e.g. 食べたい can be either wanting to eat or wanting to be eaten)
I realize that 食べたい is usually presented as a “conjugated” form of the verb 食べる, which transforms it from “to eat” to “(somebody) want(s) to eat”. However, as stated above, 食べたい is really an adjective, meaning “wanting to eat/be eaten”. This won’t change how sentences are generally translated into normal English, but it does change how one understands the literal translations.
Below are some examples. In real life, many of these sentences would usually appear with the topic marked by は, and the null subject marked by が not shown at all, but for simplicity’s sake, I’ll just show the subjects.
Here’s a non-controversial sentence with an adjective. 彼が面白い = “He is…interesting.”
Here is 食べたい acting as an active adjective: 彼がケーキを食べたい = lit. "He is…wanting to eat cake ". When translated to normal English, this becomes, “He wants to eat cake.”
Here is 食べたい acting as a passive adjective: ケーキが食べたい = lit. “The cake is…wanting to be eaten” = in normal English “(Somebody) wants to eat the cake.”
Here is 食べたい acting as a plain old adjective: そのケーキが食べたいものだ = lit. “That cake is…a thing wanting to be eaten” or “That cake is…a thing (somebody) wants to eat”, which in normal English, becomes “I want to eat that cake” (maybe? It’s a somewhat contrived sentence, but 食べたい is clearly not a conjugated verb here, right?)
Bottom Line
If you think that が can sometimes mark a subject, and sometimes mark an object, then Japanese grammar becomes a confusing mess. But once you realize that が always marks a subject, Japanese grammar becomes almost perfectly logical.
If you think 食べたい is sometimes a conjugated verb, and sometimes an adjective, then Japanese grammar again becomes a convoluted mess. But once you recognize that 食べたい (or any verbたい) is simply an adjective, then the meaning becomes clear, and the way it changes form becomes uniform:.
For instance, here’s a typical adjective:
面白い = interesting; 面白くない = not interesting
And here’s 食べたい:
食べたい = wanting to eat/be eaten; 食べたくない = not wanting to eat/be eaten
See the consistency?
I recognize the literal translations are agonizingly awkward, but it makes me think of saying sorry in German. To say, “I’m sorry”, you don’t say Ich bin leidig (or something), you say Das tut mir leid, which is literally, “That does me sorrow”. If you thought that Das tut mir leid literally meant “I am sorry”, and then tried to decipher German grammar from that sentence, you’d end up mightily confused. I believe that most Japanese textbooks do something analogous with Japanese grammar, and it’s probably why so many people spend so much time arguing about it.
I suspect I agree with you, mostly. Once you get to a certain level, if you are still actively thinking about whether something is a topic or a subject, or if you are focusing heavily on grammar at all, you are likely missing the point of what you are reading. At some point, it just has to flow, and translating into or out of English means that your communication will remain unnatural and your comprehension limited.
That said, at the beginning, I found Japanese grammar to be incredibly inconsistent and confusing, and so much of what was being said seemed to be missing. Personally, I found Jay Rubin’s “Gone Fishin’” to be a revelation! Suddenly, so much of what had been confusing started making sense. It forced me to start thinking more and more about how Japanese grammar is generally taught, and how needlessly confusing it is. I spent quite a bit of time trying to decipher it, but once it broadly made sense to me, I realized I rarely had to focus on it anymore.
When I stumbled upon Cure Dolly, I felt I had found a kindred spirit. I didn’t always agree with her, and she definitely thought a lot more deeply about some grammar issues than I, but I admired her desire to let the masses know how truly consistent and logical Japanese grammar is. If I had found her 15 years earlier, I’m certain I would have saved so much time and made a lot more progress. But that’s me. I recognize that different people get hung up, or turned on, by different things.
I’ll see if I can chase down your book. It might not agree with me, and may be too in the weeds to interest me now, but I wouldn’t mind at least perusing it to see whether it makes anything more clear.
In my interpretation, what is happening here is that there are actually two ‘subjects’ in the sentence, but again it relies far too heavily on English grammar, and therefore get’s a lot of things mixed up. I would change it to this.
Here’s a sentence where we assume には is the speaker, and that ‘he being interesting’ is an opinion. 彼が面白い = “He is interesting -to me-”
Here we assume には is a group of people, in which he is the one that wants to eat cake. 彼がケーキを食べたい = lit. “He is the one wanting to eat cake (in the group)”
Here we assume には is the speaker, and that ‘wanting to eat the cake’ is an opinion. ケーキが食べたい = lit. “The cake is a thing I want to eat”
Like above, here we assume は is the speaker, and that ‘wanting to eat the cake’ is a (constant/strong) opinion. そのケーキが食べたいものだ = lit. “The cake is a thing I always want to eat”
The reason most of this is true is because い-Adjectives almost always used to require that a verb be conjugated with them, and in modern Japanese, they still usually do have a verb conjugated with them, that verb is just invisible.
For example, a full sentence using one of the half sentences from above.
私にはケーキが食べたく思っているが
Within me, wanting to eat cake, is what I am thinking.
が marks the adjective, 思ているが makes the whole statement as something about me worth conveying. The が is the subject of the thought, the person is the subject of the sentence.
Edit - Just quickly adding a page from a book about Japanese grammar (for native speakers) to show why adjectives are subjects of thoughts/opinions, and not whole sentences.
While I understand where you’re coming from, and while it’s not completely without merit, it’s incorrect both for grammatical as well as conceptual reasons.
First, the sentence「クレープが食べたい」is not passive voice; it’s active. 食べられたい would be the passive. Appealing to English and German further demonstrates this, as English uses the auxiliary to be for the passive voice, whereas German uses the auxiliary verbs werden and sein. In both cases, the passive is expressed by use of an auxiliary and this is exactly the same in Japanese, where it’s 未然形 plus the auxiliary れる（五段）or られる（一段）. ～たい, being a verbal auxiliary, assumes the voice of its host verb. If ～たい can be either active or passive, please tell me what the difference in meaning is between 食べたい and 食べられたい.
But there’s another reason why your explanation of the grammar doesn’t hold. When you express a simple SOV statement using a transitive verb as passive, what generally happens is the object is inverted into the subject, and the subject becomes transposed into an indirect object.「Aさんはクレープを食べる」becomes「クレープがAさんに食べられる」. Often, you can leave off the indirect object when it’s understood by context. The problem should be apparent.
If「クレープが食べたい」is a passive expression, then in context, Aさん would have to be the indirect object. That would result in the meaning of the sentence being, “Crepes want to be eaten by Mr. A,” but this is wrong twice over. First is that It’s the opposite of what we would understand in context. There, Mr. A is clearly expressing his will, not that of the crepes. Second, crepes don’t have will–they’re inanimate objects. Crepes can’t want to do anything. You can’t merely dismiss this as awkwardness of translation because there’s a fundamental cognitive dissonance here. I guarantee you no Japanese person thinks crepes want to be eaten by people. They, too, think people want to eat crepes. So why are we trying to torture the grammar into saying the former?
Finally, 形容詞 are verbs, or at least verbals (depending on definition). The fact the English word “adjective” is used to describe them is an merely an unfortunate historical coincidence (Japanese grammarians essentially looked for the closest English language part of speech they could find). I’m aware of no language authority who does not acknowledge 形容詞 exhibit all the categorical characteristics of stative verbs. Distinguishing them from 動詞 does not constitute a denial of this, it merely discriminates their unique qualities (動詞 can also be dynamic, not just stative). Both word classes can predicate sentences, and so therefore warrant being defined as verbs. I get the impression from your response that I’m somehow confused on this point, but it’s quite the contrary.
That concludes my thoughts on the topic. Feel free to take the last word.
This is a slight tangent, but I was doing reviews at a study group this past weekend and there was some prompt where the highlighted hint was “every day” and the expected answer to fill the blank was に… and I was at a total loss for how に maps to “every,” and the whole group ultimately ended up in a discussion about how BP “localizes” their passages, rather than “translating” them, which feels accurate. In that case, highlighting “every day” was basically the best they could offer. And ultimately, I think localizing hints is for the best in the long-term for how you eventually comprehend the language, but it can make learning in the short-term very unintuitive
Not an expert at all, but I think those could be equivalent in certain interpretations / contexts, but だから can indicate cause/effect, whereas I do not think that もん can…
(my rate of italics usage is inversely proportional to my self-confidence)
It’s also worth noting that the presence of だ／です in both of your examples is optional, and either statement can function in any of their three permutations (nothing/だ/です). i.e. もん、だもん、ですもの、から、だから、ですから
…I think. Someone should fact-check me; this is just my gut talking.
Sorry for the late reply, this is from the Chibi Maruko Chan set of books aimed at Japanese kids. I have recommended them several times on the forums, as they are actually perfect reading difficulty for anyone around N4 upwards. The set of books has around 50 volumes covering a whole range of topics and subjects, and are always written by professionals/updated every few years. The two best books in the series for understanding grammar are 文法教室 and 作文教室. The whole series itself is called 満点ゲット, and they are available digitally as well as paperback on Amazon.
One of the main points she makes is that: “Na adjectives are essentially nouns. They work like nouns. That is why they need “na”.”
I don’t think I can explain it any better than she does, so I’ll just leave it there for now, but if you do read it, I’d be curious to hear what you think of her explanation.
I think you did a much better job than I did of conveying the use of the “passive” version of 食べたい. I always have a hard time conveying it in English, because it’s not at all a native English way of doing things.
If I were to try to improve upon the ケーキが食べたい literal translation, it might be something more like, “The cake is (something somebody wants to eat)-ish.” Not sure if this helpful or redeeming in your eyes.
As for the grammar page you posted, the point seems to be that it is preferable to use the polite conjugation of a verb rather than adding です to the end of an い adjective in formal writing. (e.g. You should use 楽しみました rather than 楽しかったです). I haven’t thought deeply about this, but I suspect that this has something to do with the fact that, as Cure Dolly says, “I adjectives are close cousins of verbs”, so it’s better to just use the verb rather than it’s cousin + です.
Sorry for not being clear. I was not trying to say that 「ケーキが食べたい」 was a passive sentence. I was trying to say that 食べたい is a passive adjective when used in that sentence. I feel the misunderstanding is my fault because of my crappy literal translation of 「ケーキが食べたい」. My sloppiness caused you to waste time arguing against a position I don’t hold, and I sincerely apologize for that.
Let me also say that I 100% agree that「ケーキが食べられたい」would be a more accurate way to say, “The cake is…wanting to be eaten”. I also agree that the natural English translation (“The cake wants to be eaten”) is passive. However, even though it sounds kind of passive, the literal translation is still an active sentence, just like any other “The cake is…(whatever)” sentence.
So what are Active Adjectives and Passive Adjectives? Well, with an Active Adjective, the word being modified is doing/giving the action, while with a Passive Adjective, the word being modified is receiving the action.
In normal English, Active Adjectives often end in -ing, while Passive Adjectives often end in -ed. So for instance, “I am tired” would be an active sentence with a passive adjective“tired”; whereas “Exercise is tiring” is an active sentence with an active adjective“tiring”.
So like I said in my prior post, in the sentence 「彼がケーキを食べたい」 (lit. “He is…wanting to eat cake”) 食べたい is active because it modifies “He” (彼) who is the one giving the action to the cake.
As for「ケーキが食べたい」, I believe a better literal translation might be “The cake is …(something somebody wants to eat)-ish.” In this sentence, the word being modified, “cake”, is receiving that action from (somebody), and therefore 食べたい is passive - even though the sentence itself remains active.
According to the perspectives of multiple Japanese natives on Yahoo! Chiebukuro, sentences like ケーキを食べたい and ケーキが食べたい are identical in terms of sentence structure and meaning, at least grammatically speaking (what is considered natural to say, however, depends on context and is another matter entirely). They may have different nuances, but that’s simply a matter of how を and が differ in terms of how they emphasize whatever they are attached to, and these differences don’t really change the overall meaning of each sentence.
