In the sentence
Watashi no hon.
Can the owner be omitted?
No hon.
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3 Answers
Nope.
One minor exception would be “finishing someone else’s sentence”, like
「やったのは誰？太郎？」
「…の弟、ね」
“ Who did it? Taro?”
“...’s little brother, actually.”
But this is really only possible when the last word of the person you are speaking to is the head of your sentence. It feels less like a grammatical thing and more like a conversational trick.
answered Jun 14, 2019 at 14:43
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I never considered sentence continuation. That's pretty much the only case you'd encounter it.– ajsmartCommented Jun 14, 2019 at 14:46
As others have said, the answer is no. However, you could leave the subject off the end of the sentence if it's well understood within the sentence context.
× わたしの（です）。 → No context
○ A: 誰の本ですか？
B: わたしの（です） → It's understood that the book is the subject
answered Jun 14, 2019 at 15:39
The short answer is no.
While you can leave off the subject of a sentence if it is understood, the same cannot be done this grammatical structure.
の is a particle that is formed by the following structures
Noun の Noun
(watashi no hon)
or
Noun (particle) の Noun
(Amerika kara no hon).
Often, you will see it in connection with noun phrases, which makes the usage very versatile, but not in the way you ask.
