Abstract
This thesis provides an analysis of the genitive subject in Japanese. The genitive Case marker no can optionally replace the nominative Case marker ga in relative clauses. This is the so-called ga/no conversion. I argue that this phenomenon is not peculiar to Japanese, but is governed by universal principles. I employ the notions "argument/adjunct" and the Unaccusative Hypothesis. In combination with the Subjacency Condition, these universal notions help us to predict which genitive subjects are grammatical.