I’m listening to Spotify on the commute and found good ol’ EGOIST song here. While the music is dope, the title give me a pause.
『名前のない怪物』
What’s up with the の particle here? AFAIK, this particle glue two noun together to make more specific one, or make a verb usable as something sort-of noun by putting the particle after the verb. In pretty sure that ない is verb, and the の is sitting before it, which makes it kinda weird.
My translation attempt at it comes up as “Monster with name’s unexistence”, which is frankly pretty weird. Seems to be much better served to が particle『名前がない怪物』 which will give us less unwieldy “Monster without name”.
So, what is the nuance with this kind of grammar when compared to が particle in this case? Or is it just the for the Cool Factor™
When が appears in a relative clause (where a clause modifies a noun, as in your example) の can replace it.
It’s not the genitive (possessive) の.
It functions exactly the same as the が it replaced.
This is often preferred by Japanese speakers, because it allows you to not have two が’s come one after another, say, if the 怪物 in that title were to be the subject of a sentence.
の can’t replace が if it’s not part of a relative clause.
I think it’s just another good reminder that there are particles that look the same but aren’t. Kind of like how the conjunctive particle が that means “but” isn’t the subject particle が.
『車が止まる少女』“Girl whose car stops”. Relative clause attached to 少女.
『車の止まる少女』practically the same thing as above.
『車が止まる少女があかねちゃんだ』“Girl whose car stops is Akane”. Grammatically correct, but confusing since there’s two subject indicator or が particle.
『車の止まる少女があかねちゃんだ』 Grammatically correct with much clearer subject: “Girl whose car stops”
I think I get the gist of it. Hope there is no mistake there.
I definitely keep this in mind. Thank you, @Leebo!
I don’t think 車が止まる少女 is a good example, it doesn’t really make any sense as far as I can tell. 止まる is intransitive, so it can’t be an action that the girl is doing. I’m not sure if it’s ungrammatical, but I haven’t seen a relative clause used that way before. (Maybe Leebo can give a better opinion on that.) Perhaps a better example would be something like 車がない vs 車のない少女 (“a girl who doesn’t have a car”).
The problems seem to be more with the translations. 車が止まる does not mean “the car stopped” and 車が止まる少女 doesn’t mean “girl with stopped car”. 止まる is non-past.
But other than that, it’s not like there’s an issue with the Japanese sentence grammatically, as far as I can tell.
Well, if you put in a proper relative pronoun, like English has, making it “the girl whose car stops” it works out fine. Japanese doesn’t have anything that functions like relative pronouns.