[xminus1]

Hello, friends:

My Minna text contains this sentence:

あの人の名前、きのう聞いたんですが、忘れてしまいました。​

​

I'm wondering why 名前, which is/was the object of both 聞く in the subordinate clause and 忘れる in the main clause, is not explicitly denoted as the topic with は or else left as the object and accompanied by を.

Thanks very much!

 

[Toritoribe]

は could work as a contrastive marker, so it's not appropriate there.

を or が are sometimes omitted especially in casual conversations. That's just the omission of を, in other words, there is no problem with あの人の名前を、きのう聞いたんですが、忘れてしまいました。

Note that there are cases where no particle is the most common.
e.g.
その服、かわいいね。
You can't use その服は/が here, since は/が unnecessarily emphasizes the meaning, so it's interpreted as "other cloths are not cute", "your shoes are not cute", or even "you are not cute".

 

[xminus1]

を or が are sometimes omitted especially in casual conversations.

Ah, yes. I hadn't actually thought of を being omitted out of casualness. I need to keep that in mind for the future for sure.

Note that there are cases where no particle is the most common.

I'd often wondered about sentences with no は or が...so it's wonderful you've made clear that not only is this possible, but also necessary in some cases. Which brings us to the contrastive nature of は, which is still fresh in my mind from your previous explanation, Your example "その服は、かわいいね" as having the potential to mean (I paraphrase) "Your clothes are great, [too bad about your appalling <...>]" is amazing. I never really understood until now that even the sentence topic marker could do something like that.

As simple as my question was, your answer was most instructive on several levels, and I learned a lot. I'm so glad I asked...thank you so very much!