Syntax of 私たちのこれが〜


In [one song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMHHIUDhazg&t=1m) [(lyrics
link)](http://gendou.com/amusic/lyrics.php?id=10052&show=1) the line
"Watashitachi no kore ga precious heartbeat" ("It's our precious heartbeat")
appears, and I'm not sure how best to analyze it due to one particular
grammatical structure.

"kore ga precious heartbeat" is clearly a straightforward verbless copula -
"it's our precious heartbeat". What I'm unsure of is how to syntactically
interpret "watashitachi no" ("our"). Thus far my best guess is that it's a wa-
less topic.

A more straightforward interpretation would be "this of ours". But is this
even plausible? I tried searching on WWWJDIC for "no kore" and found only 3
examples, and all three of them could plausibly be explained as something
other than that. So at this point I don't have any evidence that that's
possible. Is there some structure in Japanese where "watashitachi no kore"
could be a phrase - and if so, what is the structure in question?




"no" performs its role as a genitive case particle.

This structure may appear more familiar/recognizable:

> これが私たちのprecious heartbeat(だ)

(the fact that there is no copula superficially doesn't necessarily mean that
there is no copula)

"私たちのこれがprecious heartbeat" is one of the possible orders. The possessor can
shift (in a relatively non-complex sentence) and maintain the same meaning.

It is `これが`+[`私たち`+`の`+`precious heartbeat`]+(`だ`) then the modifier noun
`私たち` shifts to the front without changing its relation to the modified noun
`precious heartbeat`. It is still underlyingly `[私たちのprecious heartbeat]`.

* * *

Genitive Case: It is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying
another noun. A genitive construction involves two nouns - the head (modified)
noun and the modifier noun. The modifier noun modifies the head noun by
expressing some property of it.

