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in the following sentence why は particle is used? Could I also use の in this
sentence? Thanks.

彼は歯が白い.
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2017-08-31T09:22:13.403
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2017-08-31T13:41:14.510
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question
particle-の possession
why は and not の?
Basically, you should think of this as a set construct. XはYがZ. Of course, Z
can be anything, not just an i-adjective, but in general when you see this
construct, you should interpret it as:

> Regarding X, Y is Z.

For example,

> この街はお寺が多いです。

"There are many temples in this town". Or, literally, "Regarding this town,
the thing that's 'many' is 'temple'".

And of course, you could say

> 彼の歯 **は** 白いです。

That would also be correct. **However,** please pay special attention that in
my example above, there is a **は** particle, not the **が** particle there.
There is a reason to that.

The reason is that the が particle **emphasizes** what comes **before** it,
when the は particle **describes** what comes **after** it. So when you say

> 彼の歯 **は** 白いです。

you say "As for his teeth, they're white.". Describing what comes after the
topic marker. This is actually the perfect substitution for your original
sentence in question. Their meanings are the same with **は**.

In general, you can interpret the topic marker as:

> A **は** B means "As for A, B.".

However, **が** works in a different way. With **が** , you can generally
interpret things you see as

> A **が** B means "The thing that's B is **distinctly A** [among all the other
> things in the context]".

So when you say

> 彼の歯 **が** 白いです。

this is going to be interpreted as

> The thing that's white is **his teeth**.

Implying that, depending on context, **his teeth** are white and **no other
thing** is white.

Or you could also say

> 彼の **が** 白い歯です。

This means

> "The white teeth are **his** " [and no other teeth are white in this
> context].

Implying that **his** teeth are white, and no other teeth are. For example,
this could be used when there are 4 people in the room, and **one** of them
has **distinctly white** teeth in comparison to other people's teeth. So you
can't say 「彼の歯 **が** 白いです。」and expect it to mean the same, because it's used
differently.

If you have any questions left, fire away in comments.
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answer
は emphasizes that the sentance applies to him in particular and not somebody
else. The sentence relates to the conversation topic of him.

彼は歯が白い.

Consists of the first part ''彼は''：''As for him in particular and not somebody
else'' and the main part of the sentence 歯が白い. ''teeth are White''. The first
says what ''teeth are white'' relates to.

Meanwhile,

彼の歯が白い.

Only consists of one part. It Would be ''His teeth are white''. Here, the
grammatical subject of the sentance (which is always marked with ga) isn't
just ''teeth'' but instead ''His teeth''.
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2017-08-31T09:32:32.637
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answer