『僕だけがいない街』Is it grammatically correct?


I would like to know if the anime's title " boku dake ga inai machi "
grammatically correct? It's quite confusing because the verb ”いる” in negative
form, should be the last word as long as I know. 街 Is noun and its referred to
location of the existence of 僕 so how come they put it at last? I tried to
rearrange the words' order and put it in this way: 僕だけが街にいない。 Is there some
grammar rules support the original title in any way?




> 「[僕]{ぼく}だけがいない[街]{まち}」

is completely grammatical and natural-sounding.

If you thought, however, that this was a sentence, I am sure that you felt
there was something wrong with it.

_**That is not a sentence; It is only a noun phrase (a relative clause).**_ It
never was meant to mean "It was only I who was not in the town." Instead, it
was meant to mean " _ **The town where I am the only person missing**_ ". See
the difference here?

Unlike in European languages, the main noun in a relative clause comes at the
very end (「街」 in this case) in Japanese. 「僕だけがいない」 modifies 「街」 here.

In English, for instance, the noun "town" will come at the beginning of a
relative clause as in "the town where ~~~~", "the town in which ~~~~", etc.

That is one of the major differences in word order between the two languages
and certainly is a major source of confusion and mistakes for Japanese-
learners.

Finally, if one were to turn the noun phrase in question into a "real"
sentence, one could say:

> 「（この/その）街には僕だけがいない。」 or
>
> 「（この/その）街にいないのは僕だけだ。」

