i think my understanding of these two is getting better though i have a
question about this sentence:

新しい合金が開発された。医療用や通信用など、用途は広い。

the が i think i get. it is because the new alloy is new information. the
question i have is about the は used. what confuses me is that i recently read
about this kind of construction:

象は鼻が長い。

it was explained as the nose being its own subject rather than a possessive.
that is why the second part confuses me now because if anything i would think
the second sentence would be constructed something like this:

(新しい合金は)用途が広い。

where the new alloy is now the topic as it has just been introduced as new
information in the previous sentence and its uses are the subject much like
the elephant's nose is the subject in that other sentence.

is it a case where once you introduce something, you can kind of skip a step
in the next sentence and talk about a feature of it using は? for instance if
you were to say something like... 象があります。鼻はながい。

?
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-24T19:57:06.243
15032
2014-08-01T12:04:05.813
2014-04-04T22:01:32.363
4914
4853
question
particles particle-は particle-が
は and が in this sentence
I'm not sure if my answer will suffice because I don't know what you know and
don't have perfect comprehension of how this works. I will start with what I
know:

> 象は鼻が長い。

This translates to "elephants have long noses"

One of the most basic distinctions is that は is used for categorical
statements and が to refer to particulars. The second thing going in the
sentence you are considering above is that when there is subordinate clause,
it takes が and the main clause takes は. That I take is the main thing trying
to be expressed by the example sentence there.

Moving to your other sentence:

> 新しい合金が開発された。医療用や通信用など、用途は広い。

In English, "a new alloy was discovered. Its medical uses, transmission uses,
,etc., are broad."

The first sentence uses が because the emphasis is on the discovery of the
metal alloy. The second second sentence uses what I take to be a は of judgment
serving to summarize the different applications and express something about
them generally. In this case, it's pretty similar to the は about elephants --
making a general statement about a category ("its applications" / "elephants")
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-25T01:46:01.210
15035
2014-03-25T01:46:01.210
4091
15032
answer
If you list to people speaking, usually after they say は there is a slight
pause. This also happens in English when we are staying something...... and
then want to say something about it.

医療用や通信用など、用途は広い。 This sounds like a line from a documentary. In medicine,
communication - its uses ..... are VAST!

The point of the sentence is that the usages are vast, which is being said at
the end of the sentence as if you didn't catch how vast from the example of
'medical allll the way to communications'.

Basically the thing about は is that it can override を or が. So usually a
sentence might be using を or が as normal, but if focus want's to be put on
that area of the sentence then は can be swapped in instead.

象は鼻が長い。 Elephants: Their noses are long (weird because there aren't many times
you would actually say something like this right?)

象が鼻が長い。 Elephants have noses that are long. (notice how this sounds off in
english, well it sounds a bit off in japanese too and its kind of random.)

用途は広い。 Uses are vast! Sounds like that's the point of the sentence. が just
doesn't do it justice in this sentence simply because it doesn't give the
sentence a decent 'point'.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-04T19:23:46.873
15246
2014-04-04T19:23:46.873
15032
answer
I just finished reading a book about Japanese grammar and there was a very
enlightening discussion on the difference of は and が. I'm just a native user
of Japanese trying to rediscover the language, so please don't take this
answer as authoritative or formally correct. It's just my current
understanding of the difference. Probably this isn't new to those who have
been studying Japanese as a second-language, but being native I have never
thought about the difference in a structured way.

Both は and が are used for subjects, but the main difference is that は
indicates where the topic of the conversation is, while が simply indicates
what subjects are for each clause that may exist in a more complicated
sentence. That is why a sentence that contains more than one は sounds very
awkward (the topic focus should be on one and only one item at a time), while
a single は can be accompanied with multiple が in a single sentence.

From that view point, it seems the sentence

> 新しい合金が開発された。医療用や通信用など、用途は広い。

is most naturally rephrased as

> 新しく開発された合金の用途は、医療や通信など多岐に渡る。

I used a slightly different expression 多岐に渡る, which in this context means the
same thing. To me, the key here is that the topic of this particular
conversation lies in the wide variety of use, and not just the fact that the
new alloy was developed. That makes sense given that the new development of
alloy is exciting only because it has broad applications.

What makes slightly complicated is that the original phrasing sounds very
natural when broken up into two like given. The development of alloy itself is
a new piece of information, so it should be introduced in that way before
leading to a sentence that conveys a more exiting piece of information which
really is the topic of the conversation.

As for

> 象は鼻が長い。

the topic of the sentence is an elephant itself. Perhaps the conversation
around this sentence is about elephants, and the fact that their nose is long
is an additional piece of information that got into the conversation.

If instead you say

> 鼻は象が長い。

then the topic of the sentence shifts to nose. Perhaps the conversation was
about nose of animals in general, and someone just mentioned the fact that
elephants have a notably long nose compared to other animals.

On the other hand, both

> 象は鼻は長い and 象が鼻が長い。

sound very awkward to me, since the former is ambiguous as to where the topic
lies, and the latter simply does not makes sense. Likely because 象が長い does not
make sense by itself.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-28T16:51:02.260
15639
2014-04-28T16:51:02.260
1692
15032
answer
(Sorry for my late post)

In the case of 新しい合金が開発された。医療用や通信用など、用途は広い, the 用途 is already one of common
agenda for readers of the technical article. That's why it's marked with は. In
other words, it's virtually the same as a case when the auther is asked how
versatility of goods is.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-29T09:21:53.193
16185
2014-05-29T09:21:53.193
4092
15032
answer
You are correct regarding the first sentence:

> 新しい合金が開発された。

が is being used for two good reasons here:

  * New information is being revealed to the reader.
  * 開発された is a passive verb.

As for the second sentence:

> 医療用や通信用など、用途は広い。

は is marking the subject of this sentence, which is 用途.

This differs from the third sentence for the following reasons:

> 象は鼻が長い。

  * In this instance, は is forming a contrast to something else, for example: これは短いけど、これは長い。The latter is a valid sentence and the double use of は is acceptable because it forms a contrast to another thing which is different. So 象は silently implies that there are other animals whose noses are not long.
  * 象 is the subject of this sentence, so が must be used here to pave way for the adjective, 長い.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-29T10:13:51.890
16186
2014-05-29T10:13:51.890
4965
15032
answer
I think the example sentences might just be clumsily formulated; and some of
that clumsiness translates to English:

> 新しい合金が開発された。 医療用や通信用など、用途は広い。
>
> A new alloy has been developed. Its uses, such as in medicine and
> communications, among other things, are many.

As it seems to me that the sentence might have been constructed to teach kanji
rather than grammar, a better phrasing, retaining all kanji, might be as
follows:

> 用途の広い新しい合金は開発された。医療用や通信用などある。
>
> A versatile new alloy has been developed. Its uses include medicine and
> communications, among other things.

As for the elephant in the room:

> 象は鼻が長い。
>
> Elephants have long noses.

While it would seem as if the way to rephrase this to focus on the nose would
be to simply flip the は and が; this is not really the case; although that'll
work as well:

> 鼻は象が長い。
>
> As far as noses are concerned, elephants are long.

While this is (kind of) true, it's not a very good sentence: Its focus is not
on elephants' noses, as such, but on noses in a more universal sense.

A more natural and idiomatic phrasing would be:

> 象の鼻は長い。
>
> Elephants' noses are long.

This focuses on the nose aspect of the elephant (as opposed to say the fur
aspect or the leg aspect, of the elephant).

Dispensing with は entirely, you then get:

> 象の鼻が長い。
>
> Elephants' noses are long.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-06-02T11:28:52.040
16262
2014-06-02T11:28:52.040
2020-06-17T08:18:27.500
-1
519
15032
answer