A friend of mine wrote this sentence in Japanese:

> 彼女のどんな困難からも逃げない態度を尊敬しています。  
>  'Her attitude of not running away from any hardships is something I
> respect.'  
>  'I respect that she has this attitude of always sticking to her guns.'

If I change the `の` here to `が`, would it be grammatically correct? If so,
what would it mean?

> 彼女 **が** どんな困難からも逃げない態度を尊敬しています。
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2012-01-16T21:35:35.817
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2012-01-16T23:32:56.053
2012-01-16T23:32:56.053
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question
particles particle-の particle-が subjects
の versus が used to mark the subject of an appositive clause?
There are many instances where の and が could both technically be used, but
where one is more natural-sounding (or seems more relevant to the intent of
the sentence) than the other. I'd think I'd say that this is probably one of
those situations, though I'd never say it the second way, personally; I'd
always use の.

The clause 「彼女がどんな困難からも逃げない」 is most certainly grammatically correct and
natural, but when you change it to modify the word 「態度」, the structure of the
phrase changes to be 「彼女のどんな困難からも逃げない態度」, because you're talking about _her_
attitude (hence the 「彼女の」).

You can rewrite it like this to see how the modification works:

彼女の（どんな困難からも逃げない）態度

「の」 is really the natural particle to follow 「彼女」 here--if you replace it with
「が」 it sounds a bit strange, since a 「が」 clause doesn't seem like the best way
to modify the noun 態度.

Hopefully that explains it well--perhaps someone with a bit more experience in
linguistics could give a better reason why the 「の」 version sounds better :)
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2012-01-16T22:04:18.050
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answer