Help 月曜日は歌舞伎が休みなんです。

Hello, friends:

In the same Minna listening exercise that I referred to in a previous question today, I came across another sentence that I had a question about:

Now, the problem here isn't that I don't understand what it means, ( I translate this to mean "the Kabuki theatre is closed on Mondays", or "Mondays are a holiday for Kabuki"), my problem is that I don't understand the use here of が with 歌舞伎. Does 休み use a が construction like 好き, 上手, 欲しい, etc.?

Thanks!

I think that's a kind of は・が文; は indicates the subject and the rest is an explanation of the subject (e.g. 象は鼻が長い, 彼は足が速い). If は used instead of が, it works as a contrastive marker; the Kabuki theater is closed (implying for instance "but the movie theater is open").

In the dialogue I referenced, just before 「月曜日は歌舞伎が休みなんです。」, another speaker had said 「月曜日に休みを取る予定です。」I confess this construction seemed more familiar (and "natural") to me.

In terms of the 文型 structure of 月曜日は歌舞伎が休みなんです we have [noun1 + は + noun2 + が + noun3 + copula], correct? I'm not sure if I've come across an example of this pattern before in Minna.

Perhaps I'm over-analysing this, but if I'd been given the English sentence "the kabuki theatre is closed on Mondays" and been asked to translate it into Japanese, I wouldn't have thought of writing 月曜日は歌舞伎が休みなんです. So I was keen to understand this. Perhaps I'm just unfamiliar with an idiomatic use of 休み?

xminus1 said:

In terms of the 文型 structure of 月曜日は歌舞伎が休みなんです we have [noun1 + は + noun2 + が + noun3 + copula], correct?

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Right. The pattern is "Noun1 + は + Noun2 + が + Noun3 + copula".
e.g.
1. 彼はお父さんが先生です。
2. このビルは高さが日本一です。
3. 彼女は切手集めが趣味です。
4. あのレストランは魚料理が名物です。

(Incidentally, #1 and #2 are different from #3 and #4 in the relation among nouns. They can be changed to;
1'. 彼のお父さんは先生です。
2'. このビルの高さは日本一です。
3'. 彼女の趣味は切手集めです。
4'. あのレストランの名物は魚料理です。)

Noun clauses also can be used as nouns. You've seen these sentences before, maybe?
e.g.
彼女は切手を集めるのが趣味です。


There is no problem with 歌舞伎は月曜日が休みです. This is an explanation about Kabuki. In contrast, 月曜日は歌舞伎が休みなんです is an explanation about Monday. Notice that the topic they are talking about right now is "Monday". That's why the speaker used that expression.

Toritoribe said:

Noun clauses also can be used as nouns. You've seen these sentences before, maybe?
e.g.
彼女は切手を集めるのが趣味です。

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If I'm correct in my thinking this sentence is an example of what Minna calls "nominalizing の"...and you helped me a few months back with understanding the distinction of のが versus のは. Essentially you told me that のが was parallel to the common 文型 [noun1 + は + noun2 + が + adjective + です]. But of course in your example of stamp collecting we have a noun sentence rather than an adjective sentence.

Minna also talks about (as a separate grammatical concept) "noun modification", where a verbal phrase, adjective, or noun can modify a noun. In my original example, this wasn't applicable because nouns in this construction require の when they modify other nouns. (At least that's what the book says).

Anyway, before I get too confused I think it would be best for me to just remember your example sentences and get the pattern in my head:

The pattern is "Noun1 + は + Noun2 + が + Noun3 + copula".
e.g.
1. 彼はお父さんが先生です。
2. このビルは高さが日本一です。
3. 彼女は切手集めが趣味です。
4. あのレストランは魚料理が名物です。

Click to expand...

Lastly...

月曜日は歌舞伎が休みなんです is an explanation about Monday. Notice that the topic they are talking about right now is "Monday". That's why the speaker used that expression.

Click to expand...

That's a great point and my translation didn't make the emphasis of Monday in the Japanese explicit at all.

As always, Toritoribe-san, thank you so much!!

xminus1 said:

If I'm correct in my thinking this sentence is an example of what Minna calls "nominalizing の"

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That's right. This の is called nominalizer, which is used to change a verbal phrase/clause to a noun phrase/clause.

Toritoribe said:

Right. The pattern is "Noun1 + は + Noun2 + が + Noun3 + copula".
e.g.
1. 彼はお父さんが先生です。
2. このビルは高さが日本一です。
3. 彼女は切手集めが趣味です。
4. あのレストランは魚料理が名物です。

(Incidentally, #1 and #2 are different from #3 and #4 in the relation among nouns. They can be changed to;
1'. 彼のお父さんは先生です。
2'. このビルの高さは日本一です。
3'. 彼女の趣味は切手集めです。
4'. あのレストランの名物は魚料理です。)

Click to expand...

I've had a chance now to look more carefully at these example sentences. If your revised sentences (1'-4') had が rather than は I think I could see a similarity to a construction Minna has talked about:


In your sentence examples we seem to have prepositional phrases (の phrases indicating possession/source/origin/etc.) that have become topicalized (where the の is replaced with は).

Unless I'm getting the wrong idea here these parallel examples have really helped me to see this pattern clearly.

Hmm, "subject + が + object + を + transitive verb" is always a 現象文; a sentence that describes an event since this is a verb sentence. However, noun sentences are mostly 主題文; a sentence about the topic, so I think the pattern of topicalization is not the same.

Toritoribe said:

"subject + が + object + を + transitive verb" is always a 現象文; a sentence that describes an event since this is a verb sentence. However, noun sentences are mostly 主題文; a sentence about the topic

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I didn't know this...wow that's useful information; thanks!

So, there is no similarity between the topicalizing 文型 of 現象文 and 主題文, but...was I correct in thinking there was a relationship between the example sentences?

In which case, it would seem that there is a の phrase that becomes a topic (dropping the の), and a former topic that becomes...a subject marked by が?

It strikes me that you're overthinking this a bit. It's not (or it shouldn't be) all that complicated.

The two sentences describe the same factual situation. There is a person (彼) and his father is a teacher. What changes is the emphasis/framing of the sentence.

彼のお父さんは先生です is, at its heart, a statement about the father (i.e. the father is the topic). If you wanted to continue the thought, you might say, 彼のお父さんは先生ですから、教え子からの手紙がよく届きます。 "His father is a teacher, so he (i.e. the father) often receives letters from his students."

彼はお父さんが先生です, on the other hand, is a statement about 彼. If you continued the thought from here, you might get something like 彼はお父さんが先生ですから、子供の頃よく勉強させられました。 "His father is a teacher, so he (i.e. the son) was often made to study when he was a child."

Almost any sentence can be rephrased to topicalize a different aspect of it, as "topic" is not a strictly grammatical function like, for example, "direct object" or "subject" is. That's why both が and を can be replaced with は (or も, which similar to は does not dictate grammatical function) and only the focus/emphasis changes, not the grammatical role of the word being marked with the particle.

Thank you, jt_san and Toritoribe-san