I certainly think so, because 妻子のある身 (roughly ‘a person’s status as having a wife and children’, 身 being literally ‘body’ or ‘person’ as a word referring to the body – as in ‘nothing suspicious was found on his person’ – here, I think) is a dictionary example. (PS: I just added that nuance of ‘possession of people’ – sort of – right after publishing the post, because I realised I had forgotten to mention it.) However, because the important bit of the question is her existence, which is expressed by ある, I think it would be more natural to say 「彼女 は ありますか。」The topic is ‘girlfriend’, but the important part is ‘あるか、ないか’. If you said「彼女が」, you’d be specifying that the person doing the existing is the girlfriend, and not someone else, so 彼女 becomes indissociable from the action of which she is the subject. That would be a bit strange because you don’t even know if she exists. That aside, は is the more common particle with negations and questions, generally speaking.
Alright, makes sense!
I swear, every time I think I’ve got は vs が down it turns out I don’t 
Which verb to use here? I’d go with 作る but I don’t know why する would be wrong since 料理 is a suru verb…
日本人の友だちがすしを【料理して・つくって】くれました。
Hahaha. They’re tricky. Basically though, I think there are three main frames of reference we can use to figure out which is more natural, which give us a total of seven or eight rules (depending on whether you want to count frame #2 as one or two rules):
- What each tends to emphasise (this is a classic of Japanese teaching): が emphasises what comes before it. は emphasises what comes after it.
- What each tends to be used for, at least in a case without special emphasis:
- が for affirmation, は for negation and questions
- が for verb phrases, は for ‘[noun] is [noun/adjective]’ statements
- The five main differences, which you can find here (I did a summary in the original post if you need it, so don’t bother expanding the translation unless you want all the details. It’s not my translation, by the way):
Source article from ARC Academy here in Japanese
(If I feel like it some time, I might get round to translating that article myself and posting the translation somewhere on the forums instead of constantly directing people towards that well-intentioned but frankly rather awkward translation. Guess I’ll see how I feel about that…)
作って feels more natural to me, but that might be because I’m subconsciously assuming that 料理する involves cooking with heat. Perhaps it’s just because 作る better describes the act of making sushi since it’s very much something you piece together, whereas 料理する brings to mind a whole lot of other actions, not all of which apply to sushi making. Whatever it is, 寿司を料理する is very rare in Google search results when I search with quotes.
Perhaps neither verb is wrong, but one is just much more common? I think that with almost any dish, it’s a lot more common to use 作る…
Oh wait, I think I’ve got it. You should probably only use 〜を料理する when 〜 is a raw material, and not a finished product. (All my dictionaries’ examples for 料理する involve 肉 and 魚, not names of dishes.) 料理 contains 理, which indicates some kind of treatment/handling/processing (処理) or some sort of action that will transform something into a desired form (because 理 carries an idea of order). That’s probably why it’s so much rarer to say 寿司を料理する: it makes no sense to process the desired result, which is a particular dish.
EDIT: I just ran through some usage examples here:
While it seems like my guess is right at first, it’s not always true, and some dish names do come up with を料理する, and even the word 夕食. What I will say though, is that the food that comes up in front of を料理する has all been cooked stuff so far. Nothing uncooked so far, except maybe fruits and vegetables. Ultimately though, maybe it’s just what I said at first: it depends on which verb is more commonly used with the word 寿司.
Thanks for the answer but now I actually think that in the example I had, I cannot use 作って since there is no particle を there. In all examples I’m seeing is always 料理を作る and never 料理作る. Does this make sense?
Isn’t the choice between 料理して and つくって, not 料理して and 料理つくって?
Yes… Please ignore my stupid last post 
It happens to us all.
Bookmarking this for when I’m not drinking whisky at nearly 2AM, thanks!
Was that sentence from a book of Japanese exercises? And was there an answer provided? I’m curious. Haha.
No answer provided… This was from some final exam preparation sheet regarding common mistakes with verb choice:
Ah, very interesting. Thanks for sharing the questions. I hope you do get hold of the answers soon though…
I’m quite surprised that the second and third question taken together imply that 見つける would be wrong with 仕事は. I thought the thing marked by は could have any grammatical function, meaning that either verb is fine. Is it really wrong? Wow.
I’m also a little unsure about the 5th and 6th questions, but I think I know which verb to use for each by elimination because the other verb might have other implications.
5th should be 当たったら and 6th should be 手伝って I think.
I think so too. I just wasn’t sure because I rarely use those words that way.
That was also what I thought. To answer @Jonapedia question regarding the は particle, I’m not sure. But in this class, sometimes they dumb things down, so they want you to use を with the transitive verb and は with with intransitive verb.
Using 助ける when asking for assistance with something (not an emergency) is supposedly a common mistake. And 当たる is used when you win the lottery and stuff like that.
I guess that avoids really dumb errors being made by students later, so I guess it’s justifiable if they’re teaching these things for the first time.
I wasn’t aware of that, but yeah, my first reaction to choosing 助けて was to laugh. I imagined the poor homework hanging from a cliff or something, needing to be rescued.
(The real problem is that I’ve never used 手伝う with an object before. I’ve always seen it alone: ‘can you help?’ That kind of thing.)
I usually hear it in the literal sense of ‘to reach something and touch it’, but I guess that sense is used with に as well, so I should have guessed. (Funnily enough though, my dictionaries give「宝くじで一等に当たった」and「宝くじが当たる」as examples. Does that mean 宝くじ is meant to be treated as an event or as a lot itself, and not as the prize? Certainly seems that way to me.)
I just chatted with my Japanese language partner about this the other day, and (to my surprise) it is 彼を手伝う for example. (I was expecting に here, but that was wrong 
)
Yes, that’s what it means, “lottery” (the event) or “lottery ticket”.
I learned 宝くじに当たる as a set expression, but it turns out that が is used with almost the same frequency according to 読み込み中…┃NINJAL-LWP for TWC (and other particles are possible as well).
The distinction between 手伝う and 助ける is less about “non-emergency vs. emergency” (that is to say, whether or not someone’s life is in danger or something) and more about the power dynamic between the two people. 手伝う involves a more equal relationship, where the requester is facilitating the help. 助ける is one where the requester is subordinate to the helper in a sense, and isn’t in control of the situation.
So, while an actual emergency brings this distinction to light most easily, it’s not impossible for 助ける to be used with something like homework. It’s just that it would imply a level of helplessness and lack of control that usually is less common. Some kids do genuinely need to be 助けられた with their homework though 