I am trying to figure out head-internal relative clauses. A paper I looked at
presented two versions of the same sentence, one with the head word (りんご)
outside the relative clause:

> [皿の上にあった] **りんご** をくすねた。

And one version where it is inside the relative clause:

> [ **りんご** が皿の上にあった]のをくすねた。

Do these two sentences mean exactly the same thing, or are there differences
in nuance? When are head-internal relative clauses usually used in Japanese?
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nuances parsing relative-clauses
Head-internal relative clauses
I could have the wrong end of the stick here, but your second example doesn't
make sense to me.

### Part 1: regular relative clause

Let's look at your first example first.

> [皿の上にあった] **りんご** をくすねた。

At its core (haha, pun not intended), we have:

> **りんご** をくすねた。  
>  I pilfered the **apple**.

The relative clause portion tells us more about the apple:

> [皿の上にあった]  
>  [(it) was on the plate]

Looking at the whole utterance, we get:

> [皿の上にあった] **りんご** をくすねた。  
>  I pilfered the **apple** [(that) was on the plate].

### Part 2: nominalized clause

Now let's look at your second example.

> [ **りんご** が皿の上にあった]のをくすねた。

The core here is more complicated, because we don't have a simple concrete
noun as the object of our verb くすねた. Instead, we have the の, which here is
used to nominalize (make a noun out of) the entire preceding clause.

So let's look at the embedded clause.

> [ **りんご** が皿の上にあった]  
>  [The **apple** was on the plate]

Okay, simple enough.

After this, though, we have that の, turning our entire embedded clause into a
nominalized phrase. This can be a bit messy to translate into English; it
comes through somewhat similar to "the fact that", or "the act of", or
sometimes by turning a verb into the "-ing" form. Some examples:

> ラーメンを食べるのが好きです。  
>  I like (the act of) eating ramen.

Note that this is different from just _"I like ramen"_. We're not talking
about "ramen" as the main noun, but rather about the whole clause that
contains "ramen" -- in this case, about "eating" it.

> 道子さんが東京に行ったのは知らなかった。  
>  I didn't know (the fact) that Michiko went to Tokyo.

Again, this is different from _"I didn't know Michiko"_. We're not talking
about "Michiko" as the main noun, but rather about the whole clause that
contains "Michiko" -- in this case, that she "went to Tokyo".

Looking again at the whole second example sentence then:

> [ **りんご** が皿の上にあった]のをくすねた。

The key is that it turns the _whole_ embedded clause into a kind of noun:
we're not talking about "the apple" anymore, but rather the fact that "the
apple was on the plate".

Because of the verb here, くすねた / "pilfered", nothing quite makes sense -- just
due to the meaning of the words, this doesn't fit together. The best
translation I can come up with would be something like:

> I pilfered (the fact that) [the **apple** was on the plate].

...??? That doesn't make sense in English. Nor does the Japanese make sense.
(At least, as I understand it.)

If you change the verb from くすねた to 見た, that would work:

> [ **りんご** が皿の上にあった]のを **見た** 。  
>  I **saw** (the fact) that [the **apple** was on the plate].

* * *

The paper in question appears to be this one:

  * [**日本語主要部内在型関係節の時制解釈**](http://www.ls-japan.org/modules/documents/LSJpapers/journals/143_nomura.pdf), by 野村 益寛 of 北海道大学, published in 2013 in volume 143 of **言語研究**.

This seems to have been written by a native speaker of Japanese, which makes
that second sample sentence a bit of a head-scratcher for me.

For the verb くすねる, I'm only aware of the sense _"pilfer, filch, sneak, pinch,
swipe"_ , with the core underlying meaning of _"to steal something sneakily"_.
There might be a sense of くすねる that I'm missing, which could make the second
sample sentence work better.
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answer
They are slightly different, if not much. The former sounds saying a fact
relatively objectively.

On the other hand, the latter rather means "although an apple was on the
plate, s/he stole it" and it sounds somehow accusive in the sense that it
should have been there. In grammar for old Japanese, a similar form is
considered a conjunction.

> When are head-internal relative clauses usually used in Japanese?

I forgot to answer to this part. Speaking of this usage of を, not specifically
to "head-internal relative clause", I personally use it like a weaker version
of のに in the point of paradoxical sense, mostly in the form of "…、それをさぁ～、…。".
So, I think I've been using it to some degree. I personally am used to the
form of HIRC with を too. But I'm not sure other native speakers share that
sense.
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answer