Jisho.org Forum

You don't need to add a second の
他のを買った is good I think

but 他のの方がいい seems correct.

"彼は他のを買った." is correct. You can't have two の in a row (except when の is a part of the word before, obviously.)

Here's an example from this very dictonary:

他のを見せてください。
Could you show me another one?

他のの alone does occur as a reanalyzation of '他' being fused with the possessive 'の', giving way to stuff like 他のの写真, but you should avoid this since it's essentially just a mistake. 他の方がいい > 他のの方がいい

Hmm, I guess I should change the way I think about it. 他のを見せてください。 makes perfect sense if I just think of の as a nominaliser, which just changes 他 into a noun, which would be like going from "other" to "other one" in English.

Does this work in all cases? Can I say 黒のを見せてください for "Please show me a black one"? Or 彼女のを見せてください for "Please show me hers"?

louis,

as far as i can think it works in all cases. Surely your examples are fine. As I recall, の is in fact classified as a nominalizer.

Hakaku, I don't understand the explanation your last sentence at all. Reanalyzation? Is that a fancy grammar term? What's wrong with 他のの写真？

I can't see why someone would want to say 他のの写真 and what the intended meaning would be. How would this intended meaning be different from 他の写真? I am also confused by Hakaku's post.

I'd agree with what Luinil says above that you might have consecutive 'の's with 'の方がいい' and there's certainly plenty of evidence on the net that Japanese people use it. However, it's possible that some Japanese people may consider it poor style.

Reanalyzation means that people perceive the full word as being 他の, rather than just 他. Essentially, the word and the particle are fused, and that's why an extra の will be appended. 他のの写真 occurs just as frequently as the previous example of 他のの方がいい: you have to remember that particles in Japanese do not modify the word following them, but the word before them. There's no reason why 他の方がいい should take two のs; your reasoning posits that の方がいい is a fixed expression. But the problem with this is that 他のの occurs quite often without any subsequent expression of this sort: 他ののブラウザ, 他のの会社, 他のの育成, 他ののビデオ, 他のの友人....

To give you a comparative example, this phenomenon also happens in French. The actual word being "autre", but it's so frequently used with the article de (d'autre), that you end up with consecutive occurences of de de (de d'autres), which would otherwise not be permissible in the language.

Thanks, Hakaku. I think something like this happen can happen in English too but I can't think of any examples right now (unless you count something like The La Brea Tar Pits).

Richard, it seems to me the reason you might say 他のの写真 is the same reason you might say 他のの方がいい (though I doubt I would normally use the latter)---it's just short for something, like 他の（人)の写真みたい. You indeed could shorten it down to 他の写真みたい, but then you lose some nuance (do you want to see someone else's picture, or another picture of the same person). I guess I think of 他の as being short for 他の[something]--my guess is this is how it originated, just like "the other" in English. Perhaps both 他の and "other" started off as something like adjectives.