への対へ/に-Difference between への and へ/に


This is actually following a recently asked [question on how to say
"for."](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/11869/542)

I thought that saying あなたに私の愛 sounded perfectly fine - "toward you, my love."

However another user changed it to あなたに対する愛, or あなたへの私の愛.

My two problems are:  

  1. Why is あなたに私の愛 wrong? 

  2. When can I write への and can I equivalently write にの?




The point is that あなたに・あなたへ are _adverbial_ , and modify a _verb_ (or a whole
clause), but あなたへの is _adjectival_ , and modifies a _noun_. You should see it
as ((あなたへ)の)私の愛 - that is, への is not really a double-particle, but rather の is
joining onto the end of the adverbial phrase あなたへ, in order to allow it to
modify the noun phrase 私の愛. And so:

  * あなたに私の愛 is an incomplete sentence: it has a noun (私の愛, my love) and an adverby-type prepositional phrase thing (あなたに, towards you), but has no verb. (The noun and the adverb aren't interacting; あなたに 私の愛 is the same thing as 私の愛 あなたに.) To make sense of what あなたに is doing in this half-sentence, I have to guess what the omitted verb will be. (It's not hard to do in _this_ context, of course, but that gives you some idea of why it sounds a little odd.)
  * あなたに対する愛 is a noun phrase: it has a noun (愛, love), and that noun is being modified by a clause (あなたに対する, regarding you / towards you).
  * あなたへの私の愛 is another noun phrase: the root noun is 愛, and it is being modified by two further pieces of information, 私の (my) and あなたへの (towards you).

You can also have での in the same way: "山での火山活動" - but again, this should be
seen as ((山で)の)火山活動.

