ような in 愛をだれにも救えないような君に

[Soult]

Problems with understanding ような in 愛をだれにも救えないような君に...

Hello! I'm having a little trouble with understanding/translating this phrase. It comes from a song called "M" wrote by TOA (you can look for it for more context). I understand everything before the "you" (No one can save the love) but I can't link it with the other part since I believe the agent is already marked by に and the object is ~を、unless that だれにも actually is there to put emphasis and the agent is 僕? like "to you who looks like you can't rescue the love"? There is another phrase similar to it which is "「嫌い」をだれにも教えないような僕を" (to you who looks like you can't say/teach "hate" to anyone) so I believe It should be something similar? I really would appreciate suggestions and your own interpretations since it's a song after all.

I would like to add (since someone told me about this right now) that this is not the whole sentence. This is part from the last segment of the song and I believe the に in 僕に is from the next part (something like　ちょうだい僕の奥に）so doesn't have any role here. I didn't write it since I don't know how to split the song without having problems with the rules forum. I'm really sorry for that!

 

[Flaminius]

You can usually omit ような from a sentence and still get mostly the same meaning: 愛をだれにも救えない君に

We need to understand two verbs, one explicit and the other implicit, to string all nouns together in the fragment. To deal with the explicit verb, let's notice that the potential verb 救える (> 救えない) requires the described noun to assume に. This makes だれ the noun to be described (the subject of "be able to save"). This だれ is also marked by も, but don't worry, we have ない at the end of the verb group. Remember the universal negation construction with a Wh-expression immediately followed by も and a negation at the end? This one is it; no one can save. The obvious object of "no one can save" is 君, but notice that it stands outside the regular position in the sentence, and gets to be modified by it. It is a relative clause.

So far, everything has been accounted for except for 愛を and に in 君に. This is where we need an implicit verb such as 僕があげる. Someone is saying that they are going to give love to you who cannot be saved by anyone.

I think everything checks out by now.

 

[Joschl]

I will add four square brackets to "愛をだれも救えないような君に" to group that utterance into two phrases ([] and []) and two attributive clauses ([] and []). I hope that the bracket notation will help Soult to understand Flaminius' explanation above better.

This is a sequence of two noun phases "[愛を] [君に]". The nominal head "君" of the ni-phrase is modified by an attributive clause whose head is the na-adjective "よう(だ)" in the attributive function "[ような]". And this is modified by another attributive clause "[だれにも救えない]".

[愛を] [ [ [だれにも すくえない] ような] 君に]

 

[Soult]

Aah, so you think this adjetive clause starts in 誰にも？It has a lot sense to me if I think it in that way, haha. Thank you so much, I didn't think 愛を could be the object of ちょうだい (implicit verb あげる） because I thought that was omitted and the reader should have taken the guess, and since the first sentence where a similar construction appeared was "「嫌い」をだれにも教えない君に（もっと奥を奥へ。）", I thought it had to be something similar. Now I noticed I was wrong in both, Thank you, you two!