Just to clarify so that there’s no confusion. I’m sure that you’re aware that in Japanese, unlike in English, words that modify another word always precede the word they modify, right?
For example:
目が大きい [The] eyes are big. → In this case, nothing is being modified. The subject is being clarified.
However,
大きい犬 big dog → In this case, the modifier 大きい goes before dog without anything*, just like in English. *because it’s an い-adjective
The same is true with relative clauses in Japanese. A relative clause is a phrase or sentence that acts like a an adjective to modify other elements in a sentence.
目が大きい犬 [a] dog with big eyes → In this case the entire unit, 目が大きい, modifies the noun 犬. This is where Japanese differs greatly from English because English requires: 1) the relative clause to follow the modified noun, and 2) a word must go between the noun and the relative clause. OR if the adjective clause is small enough it can still come (sometimes with modifications) before the noun to modify it (e.g., the big-eyed dog) In this case, “with” is that word.
This can happen irrespective of whether the modifier is a い-adjective or a verb. Which means の is unnecessary in this case. Here’s two resources about how relative clauses work here and here
If you know all of this already, then this reply is meant to clarify your last post, which can confuse others left as it is.
Excuse me if this is not technically a grammar question but I just want to quickly check something. This is a WaniKani example sentence for the 勢 kanji. 大勢の人の前で話す事に慣れていないので、今からもう手が震えています。
I wonder if it’s okay to say just 大勢の前で instead of 大勢の人の前で and would it still carry the same meaning of in front of a crowd? Since 大勢 in itself means crowd. Or does 勢 always need the 人 as well?
I asked some Japanese people and they said there’s really no difference, but that 大勢の人 could be a bit superfluous in that you only use 大勢 for people anyway, so you can save yourself the trouble and just say 大勢 and it would be clear you’re talking about a crowd/large number of people without having to tag on の人
While it is only used for people as far as I can tell, generally when something else is tacked on it is to make it more specific, such as 大勢の聴衆 a large audience.
I THINK I understand your confusion. When they say “modify” they’re talking about what comes after, not before. Remember that in Japanese structures always modify what comes after. The part that comes before the による / によって is always a noun or a question for both forms. The difference between による and によって is just the difference between a verb’s dictionary form and te-form. That’s why よる modifies nouns but よって takes on an adverbial meaning and goes with a verb.
How the hell is によって supposed to only modify verbs and adjectives if I see it being used with nouns right in the first example I saw?
アメリカでは州によって法律が違う。
In America, laws differ depending on the state.
によって is going with 違う.
法律が違う
How do they 違う?
州によって
yeah unfortunately you can’t change it once posted
I’ll let you guys know if my problem still persists later on. Thanks!