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I have seen this pattern where を is replaced by の in many sentences that use a する verb. I got used to this construction by exposure and it has started to look less clunky and more natural to me, but I would like to know:

1)Is there is an actual difference in meaning, or at least in nuance, between both patterns?

2) Are both options valid in any situation or should I pick only one of them in any particular case?

I naturally would go with:

「姉が私たちを世話してくれた。」

as I understand the structure of the sentence as:

(私たち)を (世話する)(to take care of us)

However, I see the following pattern quite frequently:

(私たちの世話)を (する)(to do the take caring of us)

Now, don't get me wrong, I would never translate this into “to do the take caring of us” but I would translate it as “to take care of us as” well, but hopefully you can see my point this way.

I think that what made it mind blowing for me was that coupling the suru verb as a noun to the previous word (the object, in my example 私たち) somehow “detaches” the verb from the actual subject (姉), but at the end of the day it's just a matter of getting used to it.

Finally, I suspect this is somehow related to the が/の substitution discussed here:

How does the の work in 「日本人の知らない日本語」?

Thank you very much!

jarmanso7
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    Related: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/4006/9831 / https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/1535/9831 / https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/26137/9831 – chocolate Mar 10 '19 at 16:27

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