Help Where's the verb?

[xminus1]

Hello!

I can't make out the following sentence:

​

咲く日が同じ所を線で結んだものを「桜前線」と言います。​

The text is from the picture I've included below. What puzzles me is the もの and the second を because I don't see a transitive verb that should complete the construction. I'm assuming that 同じ所 is the direct object of 結んだ. Is there another verb to be understood from the context? Thank you!

 

[bentenmusume]

XをYと言う means "to call X Y".

Perhaps you're used to thinking of 言う as "say", which is why it doesn't "feel" transitive to you, but in this case it's a transitive verb meaning "to call", and the object (i.e. the thing which can be described/expressed by the term Y) takes を.

 

[xminus1]

bentenmusume-san, thank you! It all becomes clear now.

 

[xminus1]

During a review, after almost two months since I started this thread, I re-read the sentence in question. I am ashamed to admit that I had forgotten that 言う could be used transitively! Confusion ensued (all over again).

Fortunately I remembered that I had asked Japan Reference about this construction so I returned here to be re-educated. Reading bentenmusume-san's explanation cleared up the old problem, but, I can no longer describe the situation as being "all clear now". I have more questions!

咲く日が同じ所を線で結んだものを「桜前線」と言います。

1. I initially thought that 咲く日が was the subject of 結んだ which is modifying もの. もの and 桜前線 are dual objects of 言います. What is the subject of 言います? Is it impersonal?

2. I initially thought that 同じ modified 所, i.e. "the same area", although this made my English translation rather clumsy. It now seems to make more sense if 咲く日 and 同じ, i.e. "the same blooming day", went together. Am I wrong about this?

Thank you!

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

「咲く日が同じ」is a phrase that describes 「所」. The direct object of 結んだ is in fact 所.
The subject of 結んだ is omitted and not necessary here, but would be whoever drew the lines.
This would be difficult to translate into English if you don't transform it into a passive phrase, since we cannot so easily omit subjects.

「咲く日が同じ所を線で結んだ」 all together is an independent clause that describes 「もの」.

The subject of 言います is omitted, but is implicitly 'people' or 'we'. You can translate it with those words, or as a passive sentence.
e.g., こんな赤い果物を「りんご」と言います
⇒This kind of red fruit is called an apple.
⇒We call this kind of red fruit an apple.

 

[xminus1]

Excellent! Thank you so much!

 

[Toritoribe]

1. I initially thought that 咲く日が was the subject of 結んだ which is modifying もの. もの and 桜前線 are dual objects of 言います. What is the subject of 言います? Is it impersonal?

2. I initially thought that 同じ modified 所, i.e. "the same area", although this made my English translation rather clumsy. It now seems to make more sense if 咲く日 and 同じ, i.e. "the same blooming day", went together. Am I wrong about this?

As Chris-san wrote, 咲く日が同じ modifies 所, thus, the subject of 同じ is 咲く日.

咲く日が同じ所
places/areas whose blooming day is the same (date)

This is semantically identical to "places/areas of the same blooming day" as a result, though.

 

[xminus1]

Thanks, Toritoribe-san.

I have question concerning the modification of 所 by 咲く日が同じ.

The pattern here is [noun + が + adjective] + noun. 咲く日が同じ, if it stood on its own, would be a 形容詞文 sentence, 「咲く日が同じです。」["the blooming day is the same"], but in order to modify the noun 所 the copula has been omitted.

Is this is correct?

My question might seem trivial but to my recollection my Minna text has only shown examples of what they call "noun modification" where the [noun + が] is the subject of a plain form verb, such as in the pattern [noun + が + object + を + plain form verb (transitive)] + noun. So that's why the [noun + が + adjective] + noun gave me pause. I was looking for a verb to pair with the noun + が.

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

Modifying nouns is the definition of and natural role of an adjective, e.g., 「彼は僕と同じ近所で住んでいます」⇒"He lives in the same neighborhood as me."
The strange thing (compared to English) in the original sentence is, I think, the way that 同じ takes a subject while still acting as an adjective. That's just something that the Japanese language can do that English can't. い-adjectives are basically verbs (some textbooks even call them "descriptive verbs" instead of calling them adjectives), and 同じ is basically an い-adjective that just happens to be missing the い on the end (probably a historical accident of the sound getting shortened).

In any case, I would not say a copula has been omitted, but rather that in an adjectival sentence a copula is added for grammatical completeness. Sort of.
同じ is a weird case.

With regular い-adjectives the copula is not added after them, and with な-adjectives, they have the な form of the copula when modifying a noun. 同じ is peculiar in acting like an い-adjective in most ways but taking the copula when at the end of a sentence. (It's arguably a noun when you do that, but then again, it's arguable that all な- and の-adjectives are just descriptive nouns.)

Anyway, in your original sentence 同じ was not acting in any way unique or peculiar, it was just being an adjective. You could similarly have,
「とある髪が赤い男が駅の前で待っていた」⇒"A certain red-haired man was waiting in front of the station"
In this case, 彼は髪が赤い would not take a copula (it might take です for politeness, but not as a copula, and not だ at all), so hopefully that clarifies why I wouldn't consider there to be any omitted copula.

 

[Toritoribe]

Good question! Yes, 同じ is indeed a bit special. As Chris-san mentioned, 同じ was originally シク活用形容詞 in classical Japanese (equivalent to i-adjective in modern Japanese). As you would know, 同じく is an adverbial form, as same as 楽しく or 優しく.

There were two different attributive forms for this adjective; 同じ and 同じき. 同じき was mostly used in 漢文 or academic/stiff writing style, but this form is obsolete in modern Japanese, as same as 楽しき or 優しき

同じ changed to a na-adjective lately, so 同じな and 同じに also became to be used as an attributive form and adverbial form, respectively. As a result, 同じ is used as the main attributive form, and 同じな is mostly used for の (e.g. 同じなので, 同じなのに).

 

[xminus1]

Chris-san and Toritoribe-san, thank you both very much. You have given superb answers to my question.

The「桜前線」"blurb" that contained the sentence provoking all my questions seemed like a bit of page filler at the end of the principal reading exercise, and I think the Minna publishers would be particularly impressed with your significant grammatical information.