Understanding adjectives with noun phrase eg 髪がきれいな女性


I am trying to complete my understanding of adjectives, and I came across this
example phrase from the wasabi-jpn guide:

髪がきれいな女性 - A woman with beautiful hair.

I would have thought this would mean something like "as for the hair,
beautiful woman" since the きれいな女性 part acts as one unit connected by the な
meaning 'beautiful woman', and then the 髪 acts as the focus of the clause
since it's got the が marker.

I'm not sure what I should be searching for/reading up on to understand this
better, and the related questions all seem to be constructed slightly
differently, so any help would be appreciated.




> 髪がきれいな女性 - A woman with beautiful hair.

I feel this translation is good.

> "as for the hair, beautiful woman"

This might be 髪は、きれいな女性.

Both は and が indicate the topic/theme of the predicate/verb, but while は is
more for the whole sentence, が is good for modifiers.

> 髪がきれいな女性

For us native speakers, it's the same as 髪 **の** きれいな女性.  
It works with が because of the same reason that an adjective completes a
predicate: あの人は髪 **が きれい** ; きれいな takes が to indicate the subject. So, it's
parsed this way:

> ［髪がきれいな］女性 ＝ ［髪のきれいな］女性

So, grammatically, it's closer to _A woman whose hair is beautiful._

