好き question

[jmignot]

This is a question about how to use 好き in relative clauses. The point is the following:

Starting from the sentence: あの人は本が好きです "this person likes the book",
and considering that 好き is a な adjective,
is it correct to write: あの人が好きだ本 for: "the book that this person likes",
and also: 本が好きだ人 for: "the person that likes the book"?
Can な be substituted for だ in any of these sentences?

What confuses me here is that in the original sentence, one has both a topic, marked by は and (I think) a subject marked by が, so that it is not clear which one can be followed by が in the relative clause.

Can anybody shed some light on this?

Jean-Michel

[Airth]

Hello Jean-Michel,

I usually slip up somewhere with these kind of grammar questions, but I'll give this one a go.

あの人が好きだ本

To me this reads as "I like that person. Book." In other words, it doesn't work. I think you should write あの人の好きな本だ (The book that person likes). As you rightly pointed out 好き is a な adjective, so you've got to use the な to connect it to the noun. You've also got to make the liking of the book a possessive with the の.

本が好きだ人

Again, with this one changing the だ to な would give the meaning "A person who likes books."

You're dealing with grammatical fragments here. I think it's better to try and make complete sentences to give proper meaning to each one. Otherwise you can find yourself fighting with grammar without having a 'communication objective' in mind.

[tiroth]

I think you are on the right path. As Airth said, you MUST use な for な-adjectives. It's probably best not to even think of the relationship between な and だ but simply remember that the form 好きな本 must always be used when a な-adjective modifies a noun.

I'm not sure if this is a very natural sentence, but I think you can construct the relative clause just like you were trying:
（私は）あの人が好きな本が嫌いです。

For clarity it's common to change this to
（私は）あの人の好きな本が嫌いです。

Things like 好き and 嫌い are known as "double が affective predicates". This means they can take up to two が clauses, although in practice one is often the topic and marked with は.

[Alan]

Things like 好き and 嫌い are known as "double が affective predicates".

Interesting. I've only seen examples like <subject/topic>は<object>が好き up to now, and had assumed that in these cases the subject had to be the topic and take は. I hadn't realised that actually that は was overriding a second が. Using 好き as a な adjective (好きな本) does read much more easily though.

[Airth]

Things like 好き and 嫌い are known as "double が affective predicates". This means they can take up to two が clauses, although in practice one is often the topic and marked with は.

Hello Tiroth,

I've never heard of "double が affective predicates". Where did you learn about those? And do you have any other examples? Thanks.

[Alan]

I found a bit more in "An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics" by Natsuko Tsujimura, which notes that in the case of verbs with two が 's, the first has to be the subject & the second the object. It refers to the types of verbs that take two が as stative verbs. Obviously 'aru' and 'iru' are examples.

There's also some useful bits in one of the student exercises in semantics. The second of these uses a na adjective (うまい). I'll quote some of that (maybe I'll learn it too that way):

Japanese is famous for having what are called multiple subject sentences. Consider (a-b).

a) Tanaka-sensei ga musuko-san ga nakunatta.
(It is Professor Tanaka whose son has died)

b) Yahari natsu ga biiru ga umai.
(After all, it's during the summer that beer tastes good)

In (a-b), there are two NPs that are both marked with the particle that typically goes with the subject. It has been claimed that the second NP in each of these sentences is the true subject, whereas the first NP-ga is to be distiguished as a MAJOR subject. The first NP-ga typically receives a stress peak and is followed by a pause

It goes on to give examples that are semantically anomalous.

The only problem with this book is that it is written for linguistics people and keeps using explanations and long words that the grammatically retarded yours truely struggles with.

[jmignot]

This seems to be a rather intricate grammar point. I will have to practice a lot before I can feel comfortable with it. Thanks to all of you for these explanations.

Jean-Michel

[Psy]

本が好きだ人

While from my experience it isn't that common, it is perfectly OK to say 「本が好きである人」[person/people who likes books]. The only way to use the positive-present copula in a relative clause is with である. This is why people are telling you not to use だ/です.

[jmignot]

本が好きだ人

While from my experience it isn't that common, it is perfectly OK to say 「本が好きである人」[person/people who likes books]. The only way to use the positive-present copula in a relative clause is with である. This is why people are telling you not to use だ/です.

This is the important point I missed: the copula だ cannot be used in a relative clause.
By specifying "positive-present", do you mean that the latter restriction does not apply to other forms such as: だった、ではない、だった、ではなかった ?

[Bueller_007]

本が好きだ人

While from my experience it isn't that common, it is perfectly OK to say 「本が好きである人」[person/people who likes books]. The only way to use the positive-present copula in a relative clause is with である. This is why people are telling you not to use だ/です.

This is the important point I missed: the copula だ cannot be used in a relative clause.
By specifying "positive-present", do you mean that the latter restriction does not apply to other forms such as: だった、ではない、だった、ではなかった ?

Yes, those are fine. But usually the は gets dropped in relative clauses, so ではない works better in relative clauses as でない, and ではなかった works better as でなかった.