I just read an article explaining that が should not be thought of as a subject particle, since it can also mark the object, which is fine and dandy on its own.
However, I also remember reading an article that explained that when certain transitive verbs (e.g. 話す) get conjugated into particular forms (e.g. potential), anything that would have been marked with を is instead marked with が.
At first, these two bits of information seemed contradictory (the fact that the latter was explained in terms of the object becoming the subject didn't help). In trying to reconcile them, however, I came to the conclusion that を can be replaced with が (with a change in nuance), but が can't (necessarily) be replaced with を. Does this seem accurate, or is one of the sources of information wrong?
Answer
From the article:
クレープが食べたいから。
The subject of this sentence is crepe. 食べたい does not mean "wants to eat" any more than 好き means "likes". 食べたい functions as an adjective, expressing that crepes are "eatable" (not in an ability way, but in a preference way). It's no coincidence that 〜たい constructions conjugate exactly like い-adjectives.
So, literally: "Because crepes are eatable."
It's conspicuous that Mr. Kim didn't provide any other examples of が marking an object. To play devil's advocate though, I'll come up with one on his behalf:
私は日本語が分かります。
The most natural way to translate this into English is "I understand Japanese."
"I" is the subject, "Japanese" is the object. Simple.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) English is not Japanese.
What's going on in the Japanese is more like this: "As for me, Japanese is understandable."
This is because 分かる is an intransitive verb. It doesn't take an object like "understand" does in English. In Japanese, something "is understandable," or "is clear." All you have to do to verify this is look up 分かる in the dictionary of your choice.
So I would take what Tae Kim says with a grain of salt. Calling が the subject marker is totally kosher.
(Calling は the subject marker, on the other hand......)
No comments:
Post a Comment