I don’t think I’ve ever seen です/だ being used with が before so it looked a little unusual to me. I’ve only seen
AはBです/だ.
Hmm. Well, there are a handful of reasons to use plain が instead of は, which all relate to the broader context of a discussion, and are thus somewhat irrelevant to a single sentence. There’s no way to know what the context was.
But maybe just keep in mind that “subject” does not necessarily mean “actor” as in “one that does an action.” It’s just the part of the sentence that matches up with the predicate, which does not have to be an action.
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Will do, thanks!
In a manga I ran into the following piece of dialogue:
いや…送ってくって！！
not sure what’s that くって at the end… My best guess is that it’s some weird informal て form of 来る, but haven’t found any indication of that except that jisho thinks so:
食う does have its て-form as くって, but doesn’t make any sense in the context of what’s going on (context being: boyfriend insists in seeing his girlfriend off, even though she just wants to go by herself)
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what does this grammar structure mean ?
(plain form し、~)
It lists reasons for something (or, when there is only one entry in the list, it implies that there are more reasons that are not mentioned).
Google gave me this for further reference: Listing Reasons in Japanese: し | japanistry.com
送ってく: short for 送っていく
followed by the informal quotation particle って
„I told you I would go see you off!“
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Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you!
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I came across this example sentence for 落とし物 in my iKnow studies and it baffled me a bit:
財布の落とし物を拾いました (I picked up someone’s lost wallet.)
In my head, 落とし物の財布 (“a wallet that was dropped and left behind”) makes sense. Does 落とし物 refer to the actual thing that has been lost, or something more abstract? Or is my issue with the の maybe, because it doesn’t make sense for it to express possession here?
The only way that makes sense is if 財布の is used with the meaning of 財布である a.k.a. “the lost property that is a wallet”? That would make sense, but somehow it trips me up.
Anyone got any better idea?
Presumably this is the genitive の, yeah.
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That’s what I thought too, but it seems a bit counterintuitive. 
Oh well 
Would this be referring to something that dropped out of the wallet or the wallet itself being the `落とし物’?
Sometimes the usage of の is different than I expect, sometimes I can figure it out but other times I’m left unsure.
The translation provided is “I picked up someone’s lost wallet.”, so it would be the wallet itself that was dropped, I guess.
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Interesting, do you know what this kind of usage would be called so I could look into it? I looked up the term “genitive” that leebo mentioned but it seemed like the normal ('s) kind of translation
“wallet’s lost item” isn’t what it really means here as you said
Hmmm, I’m not that knowledgeable on grammar definitions, but I think “genitive” is when a noun is modifying another noun (the 's case definitely belongs here). I’m not sure what other way there’d be of describing this.
The Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar gives these example sentences for what I think is the same construction as yours:
with this explanation:
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Yeah that helps a lot thanks!
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A lot of people will distinguish between two の: の as a genitive case marker—normally denotes possession, association, relation, etc.; and の as one adnominal form of the copula (=である). That’s the technical term but I’m not sure you’ll find much by googling that, because for whatever reason, it doesn’t seem to be usually explained that way in Japanese textbooks / introductory grammars. Though there really isn’t much to explain; it’s equivalent to である in that sense, except for formality.
As to why it is that way, one hypothesis is that it derives from a very old copula n- that also gave us に (used adverbially). That’s about it. Not much to say. Whether the two の actually are the same thing or come from the same thing is kind of a theoretical question, which shouldn’t bother you; but since you asked about the terminology…
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I am just starting out my grammar studies and have a potentially silly question. I tried searching through the forum for answers but wasn’t successful; I’m sorry if this has been answered before.
Getting to the point: I’m reviewing particles and came across this example.
あなたの名前は。(translated as “What is your name?”)
Since は is the topic particle, I get that 名前 is the topic, but if you’re asking it in question form, then why not use the question particle: あなたの名前か。?
It’s because it’s not a complete sentence. The implied なんですか is left out. If you said the whole thing, then you’d see the か at the end.
It’s like saying “Your name is…” in English, and trailing off.
あなたの名前か would probably be interpreted as a rude “That’s your name?” or “It was your name?” depending on context. か is usually not used at the end of plain (non-polite form) sentences, and using it that way can make things blunt or rude.
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