I've heard that が is also used for pairing two sentences, for example 店に行ったが品物がたくさんありました。 (I went to the department store and I found lots of goodies).
I haven't heard of that usage - I've always seen it showing a 'but/however' meaning when connecting the two. Checked a grammar dictionary and it backed that up. If you have a textbook or resource that refers to that usage, do let me know. Thanks!
Well, I've seen this on Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese. Right now the site is down so I cannot view it to give you a link to the article :) But I'll try later...
Viewing this on archive.org : http://replay.web.archive.org/20080705115013/http://www.guidetojapanese.org/compound.html 3rd paragraph after the examples at "Expressing contradiction using 「が」 and 「けど」" . (Sorry, I don't want to spam and I hope it's not considered my comment a spam)
Ok, talked to a Japanese teacher about this. It is valid, but the usage is not (according to her) as general as simply just pairing two sentences.
Using the example that you gave, she said that it most likely (it is difficult to tell without context) that the part prior to the が is previously known knowledge (to the listener), while the part following it is new information. She wasn`t 100% confident that this was the only way it could be used in the joining sense, but said that this usage definitely exists.
*laughs* no trouble at all - it was new to me, so it helped out!
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I have heard conflicting things about using が vs. けど to contrast clauses. Most natives I have asked say that が is generally used after verbs/adjectives in polite form, and けど is used after the dictionary form. Various textbooks also say something along these lines. But at the same time, I see and hear countless examples of this 'general rule' being thrown out the window. What's the consensus on this? けど is undoubtedly somewhat less formal, but is it fine to use が after plain inflections? Is there a difference in nuance or something?
These pages do not get as much traffic as the forums do (I wish I could figure out a way to fix that) - and this is a really interesting question, so you may want to post in the forums as well.
I happened across this [url=http://nihonshock.com/2010/02/particles-the-difference-between-wa-and-ga/]explanation of the difference between 「は」 and 「が」[/url] and thought it might be useful. It does a pretty good job of getting into the details of this fairly tricky concept.
Is there literally no rules as to what you can put the が after?
If so, this seems preferable to けど because there's less chance i'll mess up in speech haha
First off, thanks to Belgand for that review, I think I'm getting the idea of 「は」Vs「が」but I'm still left with a question.
He said that "「が」 is also used when utilizing 好き, 嫌い, and other adjectives." so would that mean that a sentence such as 「今日が寒い。」would make sense in this spectrum? If so, would this purely be adding an emphasis to the fact that today and not some other day is cold?
