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Since you can't use は in subordinate clauses, it looks to me like が is forced
to take on both roles, so how would we distinguish them? For example, if we
have the sentence

> 僕が好きな動物

how do we distinguish between "animal that I like" and "animal that likes me"?
Since it's が, I think that if we treated that clause like a sentence on its
own it would definitely mean "I am liked" since が would directly link 僕 to だ,
but I've seen sentences like

> 彼が好きな寿司

translated as "sushi that he likes", so either my assumption about が in a full
clause is wrong or the way it works changes somewhat.

So far I've assumed that you can use clarifying nouns like 方 or こと, but I'm
pretty sure that that won't happen in every usage case, if I'm even right
about that.

Thanks!
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2016-01-01T03:26:02.287
30171
2020-08-04T02:09:28.330
2020-08-04T02:09:28.330
5010
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question
particle-は particle-が subordinate-clauses ambiguous-relative-clauses
が in subordinate clauses
僕が好きな動物 actually can mean both, _the animal that I like_ and _the animal that
likes me_. But to mean the former it often becomes
**[僕の](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/12825/5010)** 好きな動物, and to mean
the latter it often becomes
**[僕のこと](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/2102/5010)が**好きな動物 or
**[僕を](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/26005/5010)** 好きな動物. In reality,
you wouldn't run into such ambiguous phrases frequently.

But when you do encounter phrases like 僕が好きな動物, its interpretation purely
depends on the context and your common sense. I am a native speaker of
Japanese, and recently [posted a wrong interpretation of a
sentence](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/29565/5010) due to this
ambiguity. (There was not enough context, and the sentence could make sense
either way.)

Of course, 彼が好きな寿司 almost certainly means _sushi that he likes_ , and 寿司が好きな人
almost certainly means _person who likes sushi_ (unless you're talking about
personificated Mr. Sushi).

In this case, if there were no context at all, I feel 僕が好きな動物 is likely to be
taken as _the animal I like_ , and 動物が好きな僕 is likely to be taken as _I, who
like animals_. Maybe it's simply because talking about 僕's preference is more
common in conversations.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-01T05:28:27.730
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2016-01-01T05:28:27.730
2017-04-13T12:43:44.157
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answer