息子が子供の時、よく川で遊んだ who played in the river?

Japanese
#1

I’ve asked several people and they seem to have different opinions. Even native speakers seem to disagree on the nuance of this sentence:

息子が子供の時、よく川で遊んだ
Who played in the river in this sentence? Was it the son or the ‘I’ (the parent)?
My teacher said that it should be read as 息子が子供のとき、（私は）よく川で遊んだ。 So the sentence means “when my son was a child, I often played in the river”.
However, some people seem to think ‘the son’ is implied as the ‘topic’. But in that case, my argument is that it should be 子供のとき、息子＊は＊よく川で遊んだ。 that is, the topic should be mentioned specifically in the second clause, and in this case omitted from the first one because it’s the same (you don’t need say 息子が子供の時、息子はよく川で遊んだ）

Some other people say it’s ambiguous and that maybe they played together…

Basically as I understand it the は part illustrates ‘who played in the river’, and should always be thought of as 私 if omitted, and the が part illustrates who was a child, and defaults to the target of the は if omited.

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#2

It depends on the context. Depending on the context, it could be literally anyone. “What did Godzilla and Batman do in their free time when your son was still a child?”

But from just this sentence alone, I expect it to be one of “your son(s)” or “you and your son(s)”.

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#3

The question is, of course, who are those other people. Some people watch a 10 min yt video, and believe they are experts on the topic…

That’s a little simplification. Let’s say, you see a kitten, and say かわいい, no one would think that you’re talking about yourself.

My few observations:

  • Some learners really like to talk about these “trick sentences”. But when people talk IRL, there’s always context, you don’t just say a sentence like this out of the blue.
  • There are a few cases, where learners believe a sentence is ambiguous, because they have a simplified view of the は particle and the Japanese concept of “topic” in general. While for a Japanese native, the sentence is perfectly clear. In fact, someone linked me a Japanese article/blog post a while ago, that had a passage similar to this one, and it took note of this foreign speaker vs. native difference in the interpretation (I can look it up if you’re interested, but it was mostly about the history of Japanese linguistics and whatnot, this topic was just a side note-ish thing).

I’d really love some confirmation from a native speaker, that’s way more important than the opinion of someone who’s also just learning… but my understanding is: The が is in the sub-clause of the sentence, and has no effect on the main clause. And since there’s no other context, we can assume 私 as the topic.

#4

My Japanese teacher had said that が can also be a subject marker that’s used for emphasis, which is in line with the が grammar point in N5. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to have a perfect translation of a sentence like this in isolation, because a lot of time the は subject is ommitted if obvious or previously stated, but with the context provided I think it’s either that the son played in the river or they both played in the river.

#5

My personal take as a learner is that, if the topic was actually 私, it should’ve mentioned 一緒に to make it clear that they played/hanged out together in the river. Since this is not mentioned, my default would be 息子 as the subject.

As was mentioned before, 息子が sounds like the speaker is emphasizing that “MY SON” is the person who often played/hanged in the river.

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