The phrase 心の冷たい人 (which is given by Japanese-English dictionary on OS X) looks wrong to me, but given that it's an example in a respected dictionary and confirmed by tens of thousands of Google hits, I have to assume it's correct. It's a lot less clumsy than how I'd naïvely write it, 冷たい心がある人, but its word order still doesn't line up with anything else I've seen. Is this just an idiomatic saying that I should just accept as correct, or is this a pattern that shows up a lot?
Answer
This doesn't strike me as the slightest bit unusual. Relative phrases such as this are very common in Japanese. You can easily substitute similar phrases for 心が冷たい, such as 背が高い:
- あの人は背が高いです。 ("That person is tall.")
- 背が高い人 (lit. "A person who is tall"; "A tall person" [with the emphasis on 背])
- 背の高い人 (lit. "A person who is tall"; "A tall person" [with no particular emphasis])
背が高い, being a complete phrase, is perfectly legal as a modifier on a noun (although the が does often change to の depending on the emphasis).
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