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Based off sawa's comment from this question:

"you cannot have two ...に phrases. Remove either."

And using the same verb "同意する", I looked up the dictionary and found:

1.（人）に同意する - to agree with a person

2.（意見・提案・計画など）に同意する - to agree with an opinion/suggestion/plan/etc.

Let's say I agree with a person about an opinion/suggestion/plan that does not necessarily belong to that person. This way I'm not using the genitive-の to connect the parts together as in (人)の(意見・提案・計画)に同意する. Instead I'm trying to express that I agree with a person with something.

Deducing from the above dictionary excerpt, I would form a sentence with two にs (Which I now know is wrong from sawa's comment).

Flawed (pun　not intended) attempts at constructing the sentence:

ｘ 私は計画に彼に同意します

ｘ この計画が彼に同意します　(I just realised that this means "This plan agrees with him" (Unless sarcasm is taken into consideration, this sentence cannot make any sense))

(Question) What would be the proper way to construct this sentence?

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Flaw
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  • Just "agreeing with the person" says nothing about what is being agreed on in the absence of context. And "agreeing with something" says nothing about the people who are in agreement in the absence of context. I'm trying to express all of it in a single sentence. – Flaw Oct 16 '11 at 15:40
  • Hint: In English, you might occasionally see I agree with you with this plan, but suppose it is more appropriate to say I agree with you on this plan. In Japanese, ... –  Oct 16 '11 at 16:05
  • @sawa Is it (私は)この計画**が**彼に同意する ? – Flaw Oct 16 '11 at 23:52
  • @Flaw No, that is not good. –  Oct 17 '11 at 00:19
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    @sawa: you ought to tell why people are wrong. Just saying "wrong" or "ungrammatical" doesn't help, and may lead to further misunderstandings. – Axioplase Oct 17 '11 at 02:02
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    @Flaw: you could say "like you, I agree with this plan". Or "Mr Foo agrees with this plan. So do I." And also, having two "に" in a single sentence is something you can definitely have: 車に乗って、友達を迎えに行った。 – Axioplase Oct 17 '11 at 02:05
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    @Axioplase that's because the two に　in your sentence serve difference purposes. The first is for indirect object, the second is purpose of action. – Flaw Oct 17 '11 at 03:48
  • @Flaw: yes, I know. But your citation was incomplete: it should have referred to the bad example, and the fact that in that sentence it's bad to have two に's. – Axioplase Oct 17 '11 at 04:37
  • @sawa How about 私はこの計画に彼と同意する ? (using the reciprocal-と as in 彼と遊ぶ) – Flaw Oct 17 '11 at 04:58
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    @Flaw As I wrote in the hint with the English example, you should change the semantic role of この計画 rather than that of 彼. In that sense, the example in your previous comment was good, but the choice of the particle が was wrong. Something like 私はこの計画{で/について/に関して}彼に同意する。 will work. –  Oct 17 '11 at 05:25

3 Answers3

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After doing some reading up, here's what I learned.

Two にs in a sentence like 私は計画に彼に同意します cannot be allowed because 計画 and 彼 will share the same thematic role1 if both are assigned に. This causes a problem because 同意する can only assign two roles - Agent(私) and Theme(Either 彼 or　計画)

Breaking down the sentence "I agree with him on this plan." yields:

Main verb: agree

Agent : I

Theme: him

Location (Abstract location): plan

Now using the above, I will try to build the Japanese version of the sentence.

Main verb: 同意する

Agent (marked by は in this case): 私

Theme (marked by に): 彼

Location (marked by で for location of verb action): 計画

Putting them together I'll get　私はこの計画で彼に同意する.

1: Here is a list of the major thematic relations extracted from Wikipedia:

Agent: deliberately performs the action

Experiencer: the entity that receives sensory or emotional input.

Theme: undergoes the action but does not change its state (Sometimes used interchangeably with patient.)

Patient: undergoes the action and changes its state (Sometimes used interchangeably with theme.)

Instrument: used to carry out the action

Force or Natural Cause: mindlessly performs the action

Location: where the action occurs

Direction or Goal: where the action is directed towards

Recipient: a special kind of goal associated with verbs expressing a change in ownership, possession.

Source or Origin: where the action originated

Time: the time at which the action occurs

Beneficiary: the entity for whose benefit the action occurs

Manner: the way in which an action is carried out

Purpose: the reason for which an action is performed

Cause: what caused the action to occur in the first place; not for what, rather because of what

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  • I have a feeling that marking a something with に関して or について makes it an adjunct. – Flaw Oct 18 '11 at 11:42
  • Just to clarify: each θ-role can only be assigned to one DP/PP/CP (determiner-/ prepositional-/ complementizer phrase). There is never a situation where the same θ-role is being assigned to two に-phrases, especially because に is not a case marker. At best, there is confusion on which に-phrase to assign the θ-role to, but that will depend on the syntactic model you're using. (Some models, for example, would assign θ-role to the に-phrase closest to the verb.) – Seralt Sep 30 '14 at 12:35
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I disagree with premiss as stated - most real written sentences are composed of clauses containing verbs. You're going to see lots of "に" in a variety of roles. Multiple verbs can mean multiple indirect and direct objects. Yes, each verb has at most one of each, but good luck determining what goes where. Despite my decent vocabulary and grammar knowledge I am frequently stumped by what are surly ordinary news stories. "I agreed with Bob when he said that the plans we had agreed to last year were obsolete, but I can't agree with his attitude" is more Japanese than English.

medmal
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Three formulations that, I believe, are natural:

この計画につき(まして)、彼に同意します。

この計画の件なのですけれども、彼に同意します。

彼のように、この計画に同意します。

Axioplase
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