How can there be 2 X が in this sentence?


This sentence is an excerpt from
<https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k10012813311000/k10012813311000.html>

京都大学の西浦博教授は、東京都でこれから新しいコロナウイルス **が** うつる人 **が** どのように変わるか計算しました。

Is my understanding correct?

  1. うつる人が is the subject of the intransitive verb 変わる, so it must take が
  2. 新しいコロナウイルスが is the subject of the relative clause, and so it also must take が?

So essentially this sentence can be loosely translated as: Professor Hiroshi
Nishiura from Kyoto University has calculated how people who will become
infected with new corona virus will change in Tokyo from now on?

:S




There are nested clauses, and that's why there are two が's. To break down:

  * 新しいコロナウイルスは人にうつる。  
The novel coronavirus infects people.  
(Note that うつる is an intransitive verb in Japanese)

  * 新しいコロナウイルスがうつる人  
people which the novel coronavirus infects  
(Simple relative clause)

→ people infected by the novel coronavirus

  * 新しいコロナウイルスがうつる人(の数)がどのように変わるか  
how the (number of) people infected by the novel coronavirus changes

Judging from the remaining part of the article, this sentence is clearly about
the change in **the number of** (infected) people, not the change of people
themselves. I don't know why the text said 人がどのように変わるか ("how people changes")
instead of 人の数がどのように変わるか ("how the number of people changes"). Sometimes this
"easy" news from NHK omits words a little too aggressively...




There are nested clauses, and that's why there are two が's. To break down:

  * 新しいコロナウイルスは人にうつる。  
The novel coronavirus infects people.  
(Note that うつる is an intransitive verb in Japanese)

  * 新しいコロナウイルスがうつる人  
people which the novel coronavirus infects  
(Simple relative clause)

→ people infected by the novel coronavirus

  * 新しいコロナウイルスがうつる人(の数)がどのように変わるか  
how the (number of) people infected by the novel coronavirus changes

Judging from the remaining part of the article, this sentence is clearly about
the change in **the number of** (infected) people, not the change of people
themselves. I don't know why the text said 人がどのように変わるか ("how people changes")
instead of 人の数がどのように変わるか ("how the number of people changes"). Sometimes this
"easy" news from NHK omits words a little too aggressively...

