Help with には.

[GenjiMain]

Hi all. In the sentence 昨日のパーテイーには学生が二十人もきました I believe には is used instead of just に or は to add contrast. Is this correct, and if so, is this sentence contrasting the party against something else (aka it's not contrasting 昨日 or 学生)?

Cheers.

 

[Toritoribe]

には is just the topicalization of に there. It totally depends on the context whether には has a contrastive nuance or not. The same goes to just は. は can be the contrastive marker as well.

 

[GenjiMain]

If I google topicalization the definition is as follows: a mechanism of syntax that establishes an expression as the sentence or clause topic. From my understanding, は alone is capable of doing this. In that case, what's the point of adding the に before the は in this example?

 

[Toritoribe]

"Topicalization" is the most common English translation of 主題化 in Japanese grammar. 昨日のパーテイーには is the topicalized version of 昨日のパーテイーに, for instance.

を and が are always disappeared behind は when it's topicalized, but other particles can be used with は, e.g., には, では, からは, までは, へは, よりは, etc. The difference in nuance betweed "paticle + は" and just は differs depending on the context. には might have a stronger contrastive nuance than just は, or vice versa.