58788
> 澄んだ水面 **が** 月を映していた。

Under the 映す entry in a dictionary (ルミナス、研究社), I found the sample sentence in
question among others. However, I couldn't understand why only in this
particular sentence is が used in favor of に.

For instance, there were also these two sentences listed right beside the one
above:

> 彼女は鏡 **に** 顔を映してみた。  
>  彼はスクリーン **に** スライドを次々に映した。

Both of which employed に as I normally would expect.

The only plausible reason I can think of is that the first sentence does not
have an animate subject (月), whereas the others do (彼女、彼). I do not believe
this is the factor though.

Interestingly, for the verb 映す's intransitive counterpart－映る－they gave the
following sample sentence:

> 月が湖水 **に** 映っていた。

**Question:**  
Can が be replaced by に in the first sentence (i.e. 水面に)? If not, what is the
grammar at work that prevents us to do so?

ご教授どうもありがとうございます！
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-05-18T11:42:37.083
58786
2018-05-18T12:33:45.753
27674
question
grammar particles particle-に particle-が
水面*が*月を映していた: Is に interchangeable?
You can change が to に, but the meaning changes and it may become a bit odd
sentence. If you change が to に, the problem is who is the subject. If
"someone" is the subject of the sentence, it means "someone reflects the moon
on the water surface (with a mirror or something like that)".
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-05-18T12:15:18.363
58788
2018-05-18T12:33:45.753
2018-05-18T12:33:45.753
7320
7320
58786
answer