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In the sentence これは大きい本を食べる犬です, I understand that 大きい本を食べる is a clause that
describes 犬 as "a dog that eats large books"; and を only makes sense within
that clause.

However, I'm confused about whether これは refers to the dog (これは...犬です) or the
books (これは大きい本...).

Is there any grammatical standard I could follow or must it just be taken
within context?
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2015-01-14T02:39:59.630
21293
2015-01-14T18:42:24.253
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question
grammar particle-は
Topic marker in これは大きい本を食べる犬です
Think about it this way.

When you have a verb, it has certain 'slots' that have to be filled with
nouns. 食べる, being a transitive verb, has two slots - subject and object. である
also has two slots (though it's not a transitive verb, it's a special kind of
thing) - subject and predicate. We've got three nouns here (これ, 本 and 犬), and
we need to figure out how they fill those four slots.

One is quite clear - 本 is the object of 食べる. But what's its subject, これ or 犬?
Notice that 食べる is in a relative clause, meaning that one noun has been pulled
out of this clause and placed in the main clause, filling two slots
simultaneously. In Japanese, this moved noun always appears immediately after
the relative clause's verb, meaning that 犬 has to be the subject of 食べる.
Looking at the main clause, you can see that 犬 also must be the predicate of
である, filling that slot also.

Now we've filled three of four slots: object of 食べる, subject of 食べる and
predicate of である. This leaves only one place for これ to go: subject of である. The
whole thing then translates as 'this is (a/the) dog that eats big books'.

(It helps to notice that if これ is somehow attached to 食べる, you end up trying
to fill two slots with three nouns, resulting in something like *the dog that
this eats big books.)

Edit: Noticed a thing - 大きい also takes one noun, but again because of relative
clauses, that noun has to be 本. So five slots total, but still the same idea.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-01-14T03:18:42.420
21294
2015-01-14T18:42:24.253
2015-01-14T18:42:24.253
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answer