In my Japanese class I asked why a certain particle was used and the teacher misunderstood, so figured I’d come here next. Very new to Japanese, so apologies if there’s a mistake.
The sentence is:
犬はレストランとホテルのあいだ(に)います。
Why is the particle (in brackets) に and not が? We learned to use が with います/あります, but I’m thinking I misunderstood something.
Thank you!
2 comments
が (or は) marks the thing that exists
に marks the location that the existence happens at
ぼく は ここ に います
“i am here”
you can have many nouns as targets and locations and subjects of a single verb, same as english
Well, mainly because が is the subject marker, and “犬” is your subject, not “あいだ”.
And in this instance, it’s using は to show both the topic and the subject. They’re not always the same thing in Japanese sentences, but in this case they line up properly.
The に is used to identify indirect objects in the sentence, specifically those related to direction or location. It’s used here because あいだ is functioning similarly to the English preposition “between” and is thus a location marker.