98801
I was attempting to write the following sentence in Japanese: That should help
stop the infection that is causing the cough.

I came up with:

> それは咳をさせる感染を止めることを手伝うべきです。

But it got corrected to:

> それは咳をとめる薬です

I can understand making things more brief. I definitely don’t think I was 100%
right. I feel like there is too many uses of を. But with this type of
correction I cannot tell how wrong my original explanation was.

So how wrong was I? How should these explanation type sentences be written?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-03-04T14:24:53.127
98795
2023-03-05T03:33:30.493
30339
question
grammar particle-を
Writing explanatory sentences and use of を
It's more about idiomaticity and collocation than the usage of を.

**感染**

To me, 感染 is a one-shot event and if that happens, it is not something you can
stop (in this sense _infection_ sounds to me the same, perhaps in line with
Angelos's comment; or at least 感染 is not a good word for _infection_ here). So
感染を止める is not idiomatic. It would mean at best the spread of infection.

**咳をさせる**

More properly, it would be 咳を引き起こす

**助ける**

In the sense of being useful, 役に立つ is the only choice. Or 助けになる could be used,
but sounds less natural.

**べき**

Roughly, べき means obligation and はず means the speaker's confidence. Here it is
the latter - so it should be はずです.

So, although それは咳をとめる薬です (or それは咳止めです) is more natural, an okay version of the
sentence retaining as much of yours as possible would be

  * それは咳を引き起こす病気を治すことに役立つはずです

* * *

One general point is that inanimate subjects + action would be much less
common in Japanese. So _X would help..._ usually needs rephrasing if you want
to say it naturally in Japanese.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-03-05T03:33:30.493
98801
2023-03-05T03:33:30.493
45489
98795
answer