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I'm sure something similar to this has been asked already, but I'm hoping this is a little different. I imagine the nominalizing usage of の is related to its noun modifying usage, like:

食べる

versus

テーブルの上にリンゴがあったを食べた

but in the first case the usage of こと is permitted, while in the latter it is not. Assuming these are these are the same の, why can't we use こと in both cases? Is it something like the の usage came about first, and later the こと usage was added?

  • http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1395/what-is-the-difference-between-the-nominalizers-%E3%81%93%E3%81%A8-and-%E3%81%AE – Alox Nov 05 '14 at 21:49
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    It looks like your second example is from a paper on Internally Headed Relative Clauses (which not everyone accepts as perfectly grammatical―see Kikuta 2001 p.208-209 for discussion). Not everyone agrees on the theoretical status of の in IHRCs. –  Nov 05 '14 at 22:11
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    The linked answer says nothing about the grammatical structure Anthony is asking about (or at least, it's claiming that こと would work, which it doesn't). This should be reopened. – Darius Jahandarie Nov 06 '14 at 00:07
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    "テーブルの上にあったのを食べた" would look fine to me, but "テーブルの上にリンゴがあったのを食べた" looks like an ungrammatical sentence to me. I mean, what is that second の supposed to refer to, given that the subject りんごが is already mentioned? – Will Nov 06 '14 at 08:21
  • @Will I think Anthony is learning about head internal relative clauses in his linguistics class right now, so he used an example of this (admittedly unusual) construction here. I think Kuroda showed that the の in head-internal relatives is non-referential. –  Nov 06 '14 at 08:43
  • @snailboat Oh, okay, but what was eaten though? An apple or the fact that there was an apple on the table? Hard to tell what the direct object of 食べた is when that の doesn't refer to anything. Clearly, I'm not a linguist though... – Will Nov 06 '14 at 08:57
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    @Will You don't have to be a linguist to read about internally headed relatives. The paper I linked above has an introduction, along with some commentary on whether they're really grammatical or not (p.208-209). It isn't too difficult to read. Another description is in Iwasaki's 2013 Japanese: Revised Edition, pages 229-234. In Anthony's example, the direct object is the entire phrase [ テーブルの上にリンゴがあった ]-の, and there's no indication of which part of this phrase acts semantically like the head. The only thing that makes sense is eating apples, though, so we can figure it out from context. –  Nov 06 '14 at 23:15

2 Answers2

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According to Wikipedia (Sorry, I couldn't find more reliable source) the の you've described is the の of 準体言助詞 .

It seems that this usage of の would magically work as if it were 「こと」「もの」「ところ」, or whatever the appropriate.

To answer your question of "Why can't こと be used instead of の?" the answer is "Because の has special gramatical usage that can substitute 「こと」「もの」「ところ」 or whatever".

Yuki Inoue
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0

You could certainly claim more easily that

テーブルの上にリンゴがあったものを食べた

is grammatical as opposed to the こと version. This sounds a bit strange to me either way. However,

I ate the one on the table with apples.

also is a bit confusing to me. It's sort of a garden-pathy sentence. Did you eat the apple dish sitting on the table or did you eat the dish sitting on a table also containing apples? For that matter, were you siting on the table full of apples eating something?

More to the point is that の often abbreviates もの as well as こと.

Ncat
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