2 Responses to “The Difference Between Wa & Ga / Ni & De (は・が & に・で)”

1. 

   fudaizhi says:

   Dammit, I just typed half a long comment and lost it.

   Two comments:

   1) I think the rule “は marks the ‘topic’ and が the ’subject’” is very useful, and you should not dismiss it too lightly. “Subject” and “topic” are only similar in ordinary, loose conversational use (like when we say, “change the subject”). In this rule, by contrast, the word “subject” is used as a technical term of syntax to label “the word that names the agent of the verb (i.e. the thing or person that does the action named in the verb)”. In this sense, there is no ambiguity. Sure, a lot of the time, the main thing you are talking about (the “topic”) will also happen to be the subject of the verb. But it is easy to think of occasions where there is no overlap:

   台所ではタバコをすっちゃなんてだめよ。　”You can’t go smoking IN THE KITCHEN!”

   Here, the most important focus of attention is the “location in the kitchen”; it is the idiocy of smoking precisely IN THE KITCHEN that the speaker wants to draw the listener’s attention to. Thus, the topic is the location, not the subject of the verb.

   I think this rule really helps us understand why は is used, especially when it is NOT used in places where it could be substituted by が; and, by extension, to understand the general sense of は even on occasions where it does mark the subject.

   Note that on many occasions where は marks something other than the subject, the thing so marked will be moved to the front of the sentence, out of the normal word order; this is because front-loading an item and marking by は are BOTH devices for marking the topic, and can work in concert. For example:

   牛肉は犬が食べたが、パンは食べなかった。 “The dog did eat the beef, but not the bread.”

   On the frequent occasions when は IS used to mark the subject, then it is difficult to see this “highlighting” function, in part because in ordinary word-order, the subject comes first anyway, so there cannot be a corresponding shift in word-order to help show that the subject is operating as a topic. Given that, in the normal run of conversation, the subject of the verb very often (perhaps most often) does also happen to be the main thing you are talking about, such occasions are very common. I think this is the main reason people think it is hard to tell the difference between は and が — because of the way the language works when applying of は to syntactic subjects. But if you get the distinction clear in your head, you can also understand some other features of the use of は.

   For example, early on in Japanese class you usually learn that one of the functions of が is to mark an item newly introducted into the discourse, like English “a/an” (the classic being 昔々、お爺さんとお婆さんがいました, “Once upon a time there was AN old man and AN old woman”; they must be new to the listener, because the story is just starting). This rule overrides other rules about は and が. Once a given item is in the conversation, however, there are two basic options in Japanese: you can either leave it out of your sentences altogether, so long as everybody knows what you are talking about or it doesn’t really matter; or you can mark it with は. How do you know when to do which? The answer is that you mention it explicitly, and mark it with は, when you have been talking about something else, and want to shift the attention/focus of the discourse back onto that thing; or, perhaps, when that thing has faded far enough into the background that you want to remind people what you are talking about; in other words, you mark it with は to show that IT IS NOW (or still) THE TOPIC. You can check this by following the use of は vs. omission/elision through a segment of a story or dialogue in a novel.

   Another place where this basic rule becomes clear is in the use of “contrastive は”, that is, where は is used in pairs to mark the items in a contrast or comparison. In such a situation, you obviously need to quickly direct the listener/reader’s attention to each of the items under comparison in turn. The sentence about what the dog ate, above, is one example. So, too:

   お父さんは[日本語が]大丈夫ですが、あのね、お母さんはだめ。 “My dad[’s Japanese] is OK, but my Mum[’s] is hopeless” (sentence actually said by our three-year old daughter once, to an old lady in a park).

   In general, I think this is a good example of the more general principle that the effort required to get the hang of a few common technical terms used in describing grammar is well worth it; as here, it can allow some very pithy rules to help you as you learn a language.

   2) I am not so sure about the “emphasises what comes after” vs. “emphasises what comes before” distinction. The case of “contrastive は”, at least, cannot be covered by such a rule. Topic is often coveyed in English by tone of voice, rather than by any explicit grammatical feature (”You can’t go smoking IN THE KITCHEN, dummy!”), and so it is hard to write, but for a Japanese sentence like

   ベーボップは好きだけど、ファンクはぜんぜん嫌い　

   I think we can only imagine saying, in English, something like

   “I do like BEBOP, but I just can’t stand FUNK.”

   In other words, the emphasis is on what comes before each は, in direct contradiction of this rule.

   July 8th, 2008 at 7:47 am

2. 

   Matthew says:

   True dat.

   As always I should remember not to be too reductionist when Fudaizhi is on the case.

   My particular beef with this whole issue is that these things are strange creatures that have no correlative element in English. Which speaks to the entire problem of trying to understand a language as exotic as Japanese by analogy to the oranges of English.

   I think this is particularly apparent when thinking about constructions like:

   OOが食べられる・OOがすきだ

   In these cases the analogy of subject makes it confusing for an English speaker for whom OO is an object.

   My point is that using English to talk about Japanese in some respects is a minefield. It opens up a whole can of pickles.

   So, at some point it is necessary to just start thinking:

   「は」は「は」。「が」は「が」。「が」が「は」だったら、我は「が」がいっらない。

   Goo goo.

   I still think that in the early days of learning about it - when it is most vexing - that an answer that makes some sense (let’s call it a guideline, not a rule, since rules are never very awesome in a non-Newtonian place like a language) to a non-grammarian is worth trying to find.

   So the challenge is an intuitive explanation for the difference in 100 words or less.

   Anyone?

   July 8th, 2008 at 9:23 am

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