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I was reading this article about the difference between は and が, and in the end of it there was this sentence: 以上が「は」と「が」の違いについての解説でした。

I'm trying to understand it based on the article itself, and I don't see any good candidate. For example, it doesn't seem to be the "new information" one because the reader supposingly would read all the article, so there's nothing new there. But maybe the author wanted to make known the end of the article saying that what was above was the explanation, and that would be kind of a new information...? The "target-が" also doesn't seem to be the case, because it's not being used with adjectives or verb expressing ability or possibility, etc. So it could be the "exclusion-が (排他)" or "が used to express phenomenon the way it is (現象文)", but I'm not sure.

Usually, when が is used instead of は, if you use は it would create a contrast sentence, but in that case, it seems that using は would only create a topic. Is that correct? If so, why would I use が in that kind of sentence?

That kind of construction appears a lot in literary works, and I always feel that I didn't understand it correctly.

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I think it falls in the 排他 category. You say a phrase like this to conclude your lecture, speech, etc. The point you want to make is that there will be no more and what you have said thus far is all you have to say.

以上は〜 would add a sense of contrast. It sounds like you are going to continue talking about some other topic or topics.

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  • Thank you so much! A Japanese friend of mine said to me it was 排他, but it was about another sentence I told her. She said "I think it's 排他 because you could say '～だけが' too". It makes sense in that sentence as well. +1 about the contrast point.
    – BIG-95
    Commented May 27, 2023 at 14:17

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