The effect of adjectives on adjectival verbs


Recently I was reading「鶴の笛」by (林芙美子) and came across this sentence:

> 足の悪い鶴は、みんなのいなくなったさびしい沼地のふちの葦のしげったところに立ってみんなが飛びたって行った空をみていました。

The English translation of this sentence by J. D. Wisgo says:

> The injured crane stood on the edge of a once crowded, yet now deserted
> swamp where the reeds grew thickly, and he gazed up into the sky where the
> other cranes had flown off to.

This translation left me confused because it seems to imply that みんなの is
modifying いなくなった (as in, the people who used to be there was everyone).
However I know that this modification is impossible because the particle の
makes みんな a の-adjective, and adjectives cannot modify verbs.

This same の-adjective-seeming-to-affect-adjectival-verb-effect seems to occur
again in the sentence where it says 「葦のしげった」(as in, the thing that is growing
is reeds).

The effect of seeing this unfamiliar grammar pattern alongside an unexpected
translation was to leave me in a state of acute befuddlement. Is Master 林芙美子
using an exceptionally eloquent sentence structure at the expense of
illiterate learners such as myself? Is Mr. Wisgo using a translation slight-
of-hand to make the sentence more palatable to monolingual English speakers?
Am I completely overthinking it and just the proximity and position of the
modifiers in the sentence enough to imply the connection between them? What
exactly is going on here?




It does seem that you are parsing it incorrectly, here, with interchangeable
parts in bold:

> {(みんな **が** いなくなった[さびしい沼地]) のふち}の@葦 **が** しげったところ@に立って

Additionally, have a look here: [How does the の work in
「日本人の知らない日本語」?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/12825/how-does-
the-%E3%81%AE-work-
in-%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E4%BA%BA%E3%81%AE%E7%9F%A5%E3%82%89%E3%81%AA%E3%81%84%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E),
where this particular の, the attributive subject marker, is explained.




It does seem that you are parsing it incorrectly, here, with interchangeable
parts in bold:

> {(みんな **が** いなくなった[さびしい沼地]) のふち}の@葦 **が** しげったところ@に立って

Additionally, have a look here: [How does the の work in
「日本人の知らない日本語」?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/12825/how-does-
the-%E3%81%AE-work-
in-%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E4%BA%BA%E3%81%AE%E7%9F%A5%E3%82%89%E3%81%AA%E3%81%84%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E),
where this particular の, the attributive subject marker, is explained.

