Lesson 4 Grammar Item #2 (p. 78-79)
(Lit., Talking about McDonald’sk, (itsk location) is which place?)
l McDonald’s à マクドナルド /makudonarudo/
l where (= which place) [NOUN] à どこ /doko/
1) マクドナルドは どこですか。
makudonarudo-wa doko-desu-ka
McDonald’s-TOPIC which
place-Linking Verb-QUESTION
N.B. The topic noun here grammatically functions as the possessor of the implicit subject noun, e.g., as the referent of its in its location, as indicated with the two occurrences of subscript k.
N.B. Some native speakers do not like the sentences of this sentence pattern. They prefer sentences to mean, lit., ‘McDonald’s exists/is at which place?’.
a) McDonald’s is over there.
Cf. ここ [NOUN] here lit., this place
そこ [NOUN] there close to you
lit., that place close to you
あそ [NOUN] there away from both you and me/us
lit., that place away from both you and me/us
Lit., (It, or McDonald’s location) is the front of that department store.
l that department store over there à あのデパート
l front à まえ [NOUN]
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The head noun of “the
front of that department store” is “the front”.[1]
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l the front of that department store over there à あのデパートのまえ
2) マクドナルドは あの デパートの まえです。
makudonarudo-wa ano depaatono mae-des McDonald’s-TOPIC that
department store’s front-be
be [Linking Verb]
b) The bank is next to the library.
[Use location noun となり].
c) The restaurant is between the department and the hospital.
[Use location noun あいだ.]
d) I waited for Mary behind the post office.
[Use location noun うしろ.]
Location Nouns: みぎ；ひだり；まえ；うしろ；なか；うえ；した；そば；となり；あいだ
N.B. You need to use the phrase pattern [OBJECT]-の [Location Noun] to express the location of an object relative to another object.
[1] The front of that department store is the front of something, and cannot be that department store. See the head noun check out on the footnote on p. 16 of the textbook.