のs Everywhere....Why?


I have to translate the following for my intro Japanese class.

[code]

    私は、去年、名古屋市内の静かな所にある庭つきの三階建ての窓の大きい住みやすい家を買いました。
    
[/code]

I think it means the following.

[code]

    Last year, I bought a yard/garden including, 3 story, large window, easy to live in
    house which is in a quiet place inside the City of Nagoya.
    
[/code]

However, I feel like there are のs in weird places.

  1. First の - I can rationalize this as the interior of the City of Nagoya "owning" the place.
  2. Second の - Not really sure on this one. Maybe it's just part of the garden "attached" structure?
  3. Third and forth の - These I REALLY don't understand. How they work in conjunction with the 窓. I think it's the windows that are big. But maybe it's the house and the house just has regular windows? I just don't know. 

Can someone explain to me what all these のs are doing? Thank you :)




I'll try to offer a little less technical explanation.

Don't think of these の particles as being possession. Think of them as one
noun modifying another. We take the first and mix its flavor with the second
one, if you will. So for example:

> 名古屋市内の静かな所にある庭つきの三階建ての窓の大きい住みやすい家を買いました。

It seems a little fuzzy but this is essentially packing a whole bunch of
descriptions of 家 into one sentence. It's awkwardly long and that's kind of
the point, just like the English translation being a long list of
characteristics is also long and unwieldy. Let's take another approach from
the inside out looking at how these の are working.

At the core, we have 住みやすい家. No particle trickery here. A house that's 'easy
to live in.' Adding on to that we have [窓の大きい]住みやすい家. This is referring to a
livable house _with big windows_. If we mix the meanings together the meaning
is clear. In this particular situation the の functions like the particle が.
This is a slightly older pattern that still shows up in some places, like
髪の長い女の子, or a girl with long hair.

Moving out from the original nucleus of 住みやすい家 and adding on more and more of
the ～の phrases adds on more of that style of modification. So next you'd add
三階建ての. This is what Darius is talking about with the である stuff. You would
normally want to say 三階建てです, but you can't use だ/です to connect to another
word. So we use である to allow the copula to connect to other things, and the の
in this place has the same role as that である.

So from there we can continue adding extra characteristics. Lump all the
previous ones together and let's just call it 家. So now we have just added the
idea of 3 floors to it. Then to our new 家 language blob we add 庭付き to talk
about its yard/garden in a fashion similar to the 三階建て.

Note that the 静かなところにある uses に and not の. This is because の does not refer to
a location. If we were to say 静かな所のある then we would say that the house (or
possibly the 庭, it's a little ambiguous) _has_ a quiet place within it, as in
the の/が pattern I mentioned above.

I would also suggest that 名古屋市内の静かな所 should be interpreted separately as its
own unit. This livable house with big windows and three floors and a garden is
_in a quiet place in Nagoya_. Perhaps you can call this a genitive の, or what
you have been associating it with as the _possessive_ の.

This is a very basic explanation and I am not striving for technical precision
down to the most minute detail. Nevertheless, if you think of の as a general
idea of noun modification rather than just possession it will start to make
more sense.




I'll try to offer a little less technical explanation.

Don't think of these の particles as being possession. Think of them as one
noun modifying another. We take the first and mix its flavor with the second
one, if you will. So for example:

> 名古屋市内の静かな所にある庭つきの三階建ての窓の大きい住みやすい家を買いました。

It seems a little fuzzy but this is essentially packing a whole bunch of
descriptions of 家 into one sentence. It's awkwardly long and that's kind of
the point, just like the English translation being a long list of
characteristics is also long and unwieldy. Let's take another approach from
the inside out looking at how these の are working.

At the core, we have 住みやすい家. No particle trickery here. A house that's 'easy
to live in.' Adding on to that we have [窓の大きい]住みやすい家. This is referring to a
livable house _with big windows_. If we mix the meanings together the meaning
is clear. In this particular situation the の functions like the particle が.
This is a slightly older pattern that still shows up in some places, like
髪の長い女の子, or a girl with long hair.

Moving out from the original nucleus of 住みやすい家 and adding on more and more of
the ～の phrases adds on more of that style of modification. So next you'd add
三階建ての. This is what Darius is talking about with the である stuff. You would
normally want to say 三階建てです, but you can't use だ/です to connect to another
word. So we use である to allow the copula to connect to other things, and the の
in this place has the same role as that である.

So from there we can continue adding extra characteristics. Lump all the
previous ones together and let's just call it 家. So now we have just added the
idea of 3 floors to it. Then to our new 家 language blob we add 庭付き to talk
about its yard/garden in a fashion similar to the 三階建て.

Note that the 静かなところにある uses に and not の. This is because の does not refer to
a location. If we were to say 静かな所のある then we would say that the house (or
possibly the 庭, it's a little ambiguous) _has_ a quiet place within it, as in
the の/が pattern I mentioned above.

I would also suggest that 名古屋市内の静かな所 should be interpreted separately as its
own unit. This livable house with big windows and three floors and a garden is
_in a quiet place in Nagoya_. Perhaps you can call this a genitive の, or what
you have been associating it with as the _possessive_ の.

This is a very basic explanation and I am not striving for technical precision
down to the most minute detail. Nevertheless, if you think of の as a general
idea of noun modification rather than just possession it will start to make
more sense.

