あの日見た花の名前を僕達はまだ知らない。
I understand the whole sentence but I am just wondering why the author chose を instead of は・が. I would really appreciate if someone can explain this.
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Because 名前 is the object of 知らない.
We don’t know yet what? We don’t know yet the name of the flower we saw that day.
If you put が then 名前 would the subject of 知らない and it would be really weird. The name of the flower doesn’t know something? How can a name know or doesn’t know something? Only human/animal can know something.
Also this thread is nice for small grammar question.
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@Arzar33 explained why を works for grammar and why が doesn’t, so beyond that…
は would be grammatical, but considering the following word also has は, it probably would be a bit unwieldy for a title, in addition to altering the nuance and feeling of it.
If you were just chatting and saying this sentence in a conversation, は wouldn’t be that strange, but in a title, を feels more “title-like”.
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Maybe the question is ( or an interesting following question would be) why it is 名前を僕達は知らない in that order, instead of 僕達は名前を知らない. The nuances of both.
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