Problems parsing this sentence (ような before comma)

Question

I was reading the examples from the book 日本語文型辞典 and I came across this example sentence which I have absolutely no idea of how to parse it:

その子は、人と目が合うたびにやさしく笑いかけるような、そんな、人を疑うということを知らないような子だったと言う。

Is the first ような (笑いかけるような) modifying 子, as well as the second? And what is this そんな doing between commas?

Thanks!

Answer 1

It looks to me like two parallel phrases have been coordinated:

Relative clause A = 人と目が合うたびにやさしく笑いかけるような
Relative clause B = そんな、人を疑うということを知らないような

Both relative clauses end with ようだ, conjugated to ような because they're attributive modifiers. (An attributive modifier is one that comes before the word it modifies.) In other words, they're being put together like a pair of adjectives. I think you can parse it like this:

その子は、（　Aな　Bな　）子だったと言う。

Where both Aな and Bな modify 子.

Answer 2

This is almost certainly meant to be a representation of spoken Japanese. The person is speaking and describing this kind of person. First the speaker offers "笑いかけるような," but deciding that isn't enough, simply interjects a そんな to be kind of like, "you know", in English. So it's like, you know, that kind of pattern where like.. you're describing something but, like, in the middle it's punctuated with these.. you know.. verbal cues that indicate thought about how to expound upon the subject.

笑いかけるような is modifying 子. So is 人を疑うということを知らないような, obviously. The そんな I guess is technically also modifying 子; essentially the three are aiming to be the same thing, both in meaning and therefore in grammatical role. What kind of 子? そんな子. そんな子ってどんな子？人を疑うということを知らないような子。笑いかけるような子。

そうなんだ。