What's the reason to use "には" on this sentence

Japanese Language Grammar
1

もり田さんには、年下のかの女がいます。

This sentence means Morita-san has a younger girlfriend, so what would be the difference if I remove "に” from the sentence.

As far as I know, には is used to define a topic by its location/destination how the fact that Marita has a girlfriend has something to do with a location or destination?

Sorry I’m new at a Japanese and this kind of stuff confused me.

2

This is just は marking a topic. It doesn’t have to be a special situation.

[Person]に[person]がいる is a normal way to describe relationships.

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3

More broadly, には is used to highlight the overall context of existence with existence verb forms like います and あります. The idea here is that Morita-san has a younger girlfriend i.e. that this girlfriend exists with regard to him.

Could you remove に? Yes. Would the sentence mean roughly the same thing? Yes. What’s the difference? You would not be grammatically linking Morita-san to います anymore. In actual fact, には is made up of two particles that are performing two different functions here:

  • に – marking the location/context of existence (or indeed, possession)
  • は – adding emphasis/turning something into the topic or overall focus of the sentence

To sum up:

  • もり田さんには 、年下のかの女がいます。
    Morita-san [<- this is what/whom we are discussing] has a girlfriend who is younger than him.
  • もり田さんに 、年下のかの女がいます。
    Morita-san has a girlfriend who is younger than him.
  • もり田さんは 、年下のかの女がいます。
    Regarding Morita-san [<- this is what/whom we are discussing], a younger girlfriend exists. (Inference: the girlfriend is probably Morita-san’s, and she is ‘younger’ relative to him.)
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4

Very clear and fast, thank you so much. Yeah it makes a lot of sense I should have thinking better on it.

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5

Thank you so much!

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