When composing sentences in Japanese, the verb tends to be last right? For
example,

バナナを食べました。 --> I ate a banana

But recently I came across a sentence where the verb was at the beginning of
the the sentence.

折れた淡い翼。

How is this possible? 「折れた」 means "broken; bended," would it translate as "
broken fleeting wings"?

This is the first line in a song that I am trying to translate. The first
verse is as follows:

> 折れた淡い翼
>
> きみは少し青すぎる空につかれただけさ
>
> もう誰かのためじゃなくて
>
> 自分のために笑っていいよ

I am not worried about the translation but rather why the verb is in the
beginning of the sentence and why there is no need for 「を」.

Thank you!
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-04T16:11:28.757
3640
2013-12-28T02:34:58.830
2011-12-29T05:27:47.160
822
question
grammar verbs readings relative-clauses
How can a verb be in the beginning of a sentence when it is usually at the end? Ex. 折れた淡い翼。
It happens in sentences where the verb acts kind of like an adjective. I mean,
not exactly but here is an example:

In English you might say "The person I met yesterday" which turns into
"昨日会った人" (きのうあったひと) in Japanese or "The banana I ate yesterday" =>
"昨日食べたバナナ"。I think this is called noun phrase in English.

The important thing about this is that it's one complete part of a sentence.
So if you have "I want to meet X again" you can replace X with "the person I
met yesterday":

"X また会いたい" => "昨日会った人にまた会いたい"

Hope this helps.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-04T16:30:22.133
3641
2011-11-04T21:53:14.620
2011-11-04T21:53:14.620
388
388
3640
answer
For one thing, it's not a complete sentence. It looks a lot like a song title.

`折れた淡い翼だ` would be a properly formed sentence, if a somewhat odd one in
isolation.

One of the things you can do with plain-form sentences in Japanese is use them
to modify nouns. In Japanese, there's a general rule that when X modifies noun
Y, the ordering is "X, then Y".

A sentence ending in Xだ changes to modify noun Y with XのY (usually).

A verb or i-adjective simply uses its plain form directly before the noun Y.

In this case, both the adjective (淡い) and the past-tense verb (折れた) modify the
same noun (翼).
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-11-04T16:42:52.073
3642
2013-12-28T02:34:58.830
2013-12-28T02:34:58.830
78
29
3640
answer