Possessive の not indicating what is possessed

Question

Over a year ago, I wrote a text on Lang-8. I'm analyzing my texts. I wrote, very badly, this sentence:

この本書は、Ｌａｎｇ－８で一番日本語の本書を書きます。

I tried to say "this is my first text on Lang-8" 😂

Yeah, looking at it now, I don't even now what I was thinking. 🤔 Anyway, I received the following correction:

これは私の、Ｌａｎｇ－８では初めての日本語の作文です。

I need help to understand the の particle after the 私. Is it that rule where the noun is implicit by the context, in this case, my text (作文), or the の particle is just being connected normally with the entire sentence, but separate with a comma, creating a different style (私のＬａｎｇ−８では…), in this case creating a relationship between 私 and 作文? I don't think it's the former, because Ｌａｎｇ−８では "disconnect" 私の with what comes after. If so, I never saw it so far... Is there something with that comma?

Answer 1

「これは私{わたし}の、Ｌａｎｇ－８では初{はじ}めての日本語{にほんご}の作文{さくぶん}です。」

In this sentence, both 「私の」 and 「Lang-8では初めての」 modify the 「日本語の作文」.

Strictly speaking, the comma is optional, but that is a good place to use one because it helps visually notify the reader right away that another phrase would follow 「私の」 that will also modify the noun near the end of the sentence.

In other words, a comma is often used after a phrase when the word it modifies does not appear right after that phrase.

Answer 2

Yes, this is just standard use of the possessive の. The comma is there to set off a relatively long noun phrase to make it more comprehensible. You may have heard that は doesn't belong in a noun phrase, but in this case it's acting contrastively (i.e., this is my first post on Lang-8 as opposed to other sites).

Comma use in Japanese is much looser than in English, and there aren't a lot of cases where commas are absolutely required or prohibited.

Answer 3

Yes, the comma shifts the の to 作文, as you indicated.

Assuming that we want 私の to modify 作文：

Let's consider this case, with no comma.

これは私のＬａｎｇ－８では初めての日本語の作文です。

Here 私 and Lang-8 are tightly coupled because they're next to each other. Furthermore, 私 and Lang-8 look even more tightly coupled because they're in the characters between the first は and では, making them look like they're in the same phrase.

So, taking the above example and inserting commas explicitly where particles mark the end of phrases, we have the following

これは、私のＬａｎｇ－８では、初めての日本語の作文です。

Here it's clearer that 私のLang-8では is one phrase.

To resolve this and make 私の modify 作文：

これは私の、Ｌａｎｇ－８では初めての日本語の作文です。

The comma after の separates 私 from Lang-8. Therefore, 私のLang-8 is no longer an independent phrase. Lang-8では then belongs to the phrase that modifies 作文. If 私の doesn't modify Lang-8, then logically it must modify 作文.