I Love You ("wa" and "ga")

Wed Sep 11 1996
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
Subject: Re: now catfish is following up...
From: Michitaka Suzuki

Thank you, Mr. A, for emailing me a copy of your posting.

U:
>> Textbooks (seem to me, though I don't have concrete one) often say:
>> "the object of liking/disliking/wanting ( "suki", "kirai", hoshii",
>> "--tai") is followed by "-ga" not "-o".

A:
>This is correct if you read "what would be the grammatical object in an
>English translation". Otherwise I think it's quite meaningless. It's
>instinctively obvious to an English speaker what an "object" is, because
>English is so consistent in applying the model where an action flows from a
>subject to an object. Most such verbs in English take a grammatical object
>("I liked/hated/loved/despised/wanted/detested/loathed/admired/... X")
>except for a few which stress that something else forced one to have the
>feeling ("I was attracted/repulsed/disgusted/tempted/... by X").

U:
>> If it's object or subject is depend from the viewpoint of the
>> (respective!) language. For English verbs of like/want they are object
>> for Japanese ..."adjective" (or "subjective predicative"?)... they are
>> the subject.

A:
>I'm perfectly happy to go along with this, but what interests me is whether
>by "subject" you mean anything besides "that which 'ga' is attached to".

I think that what a verb or predicative adjective demands as its (grammatical) subject depends on the language rather than the indivisual word. In Japanese one can separate the topic from the subject by using particles "wa" and "ga". While in English it's not possible, and the subject presents itself as the topic almost always. This difference seems to cause the difference in the way of choosing the subject in the two languages.

Let's take an example:

Here, the topic is "Ichiro". If one wants to present "this building" as the topic, one has to set it as the subject using the passive voice: In Japanese we don't need to use the passive voice to do this. We usually say, Here, "Kono biru" is the topic and _object_, and "Ichiro" keeps its position of the subject. This shows one aspect of the consistency of the subject thanks to the independence of the topic in Japanese. I'll show you more about this.

Let's take other examples:

Sentence a) is simple. The speaker can control the action of "have" according to his/her own will, and is actually sending a flow of energy toward the apple to sustain it. So, "I" is entitled to be the subject. This is the same in both languages.

In b), however, the speaker has no will nor control with an action of "have". Why is "I" entitled to be the subject? I think what the speaker really wants in "I" here is the topic, not the subject, though they are inseparable. After uttering "I ", which is taken also as the subject, the speaker has to find a transitive verb to connect it to "a toothache", and he makes "have" do.

Isn't it the reality that "With me a tooth is aching"? In Japanese we say so as it is, setting the center of the phenomenon as the subject (Ha _ga_) and expressing the situation by an adjective predicative (itai).

The same goes true in the cases of verbs "like", "hate", "need", "want", etc. When you say "I want fish" (Sakana _ga_ hoshii), you don't execute any action. It's just a physiological phenomenon, and "fish" is the stimulant. In Japanese the stimulant is entitled to be the subject, not the person who makes no active contribution to the phenomenon. It seems to me that by saying "I ..." here, you want the topic rather than the subject. Wouldn't it be more reasonable that one could set "fish" as the subject free from the restriction of starting with "I ..."? (I konw native speakers of English will say no.)

Here, I have a question. When a man says to a woman "I love you", do you really feel that the man is the master of action of "love" and that the woman is the target? Is a psychological picture plausible in which the man is putting off a beam of passion toward the woman's heart? And, could he control the flow sometimes? (^_^;)

In Japanese no, at least literally, when a man says to a woman,

The literal translation may be "(For me you are) Desirable." This Japanese sentence describes a static fact. There's no flow of action. If there was any flow of something, it would be in the opposite direction, I feel, i.e., from "anata" to "watashi". "Watashi" is no master of action, and "anata" is the center and cause of the phenomenon. "Anata" is irresistible to "watashi". So, I think it's more like "I can't help falling in love with you".

Mitch

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