Editing Japanese grammar (section)

=====Contrastive {{transliteration|ja|wa}}=====
Related to the role of {{transliteration|ja|wa}} in introducing themes is its use in contrasting the current topic and its aspects from other possible topics and their aspects. The suggestive pattern is "X, but…" or "as for X, …".

{{fs interlinear|lang=ja|indent=3
|雨 は 降って います が…
|ame wa futte imasu ga…
|The rain is falling, but…}}

Because of its contrastive nature, the topic cannot be undefined.

{{fs interlinear|lang=ja|indent=3
|＊誰か は 本 を 読んで いる。
|*dareka wa hon o yonde iru
|*Someone is reading the book.}}

In this use, {{transliteration|ja|ga}} is required.

In practice, the distinction between thematic and contrastive {{transliteration|ja|wa}} is not that useful. There can be at most one thematic {{transliteration|ja|wa}} in a sentence, and it has to be the first {{transliteration|ja|wa}} if one exists, and the remaining {{transliteration|ja|wa}}s are contrastive. The following sentence illustrates the difference;<ref name="Kuno1973" />{{rp|48}}

{{fs interlinear|lang=ja|indent=3
|僕 が 知って いる 人 は 誰も 来なかった。
|boku ga shitte iru hito wa daremo konakatta
|(1) Of all the people I know, none came.<br>
(2) (People came but), there weren't any of the people I know.}}

The first interpretation is the thematic {{transliteration|ja|wa}}, treating {{nihongo|"the people I know"||boku ga shitte iru hito}} as the theme of the predicate {{nihongo|"none came"||dare mo konakatta}}. That is, if the speaker knows A, B, ..., Z, then none of the people who came were A, B, ..., Z. The second interpretation is the contrastive {{transliteration|ja|wa}}. If the likely attendees were A, B, ..., Z, and of them the speaker knows P, Q and R, then the sentence says that P, Q and R did not come. The sentence says nothing about A', B', ..., Z', all of whom the speaker knows, but none of whom were likely to come. In practice, the first interpretation is the likely one.