Particle の used after a subject of study

2 comments

1. I think because technically that sentence would be 木材加工の勉強**を**しています

   In which case 木材加工 is describing what kind of studying you’re doing. (“I am doing the study of X”)

   Vs 木材加工**を**勉強しています which is a straightforward “I am studying X”

2. I’m Japanese and don’t formally know how Japanese grammar works, but here’s something I felt.

   In this case, “の” is acting like “of” in English imo. So “木材加工の勉強”
   roughly means “study of woodworking”, which is acting like a noun.

   So you can roughly and non-technically divide the sentence by roles like so:

   “大学で(where) 木材加工の勉強(noun) しています(verb)”

   ### The following is some nit-picky suggestion for the example sentence, which may be irrelevant to your question:

   I think “大学で木材加工の勉強しています。” is a totally fine sentence, but I’d say the following two sentences are more natural to me:

   1. 大学で木材加工の勉強をしています。
   2. 大学で木材加工を勉強しています。

   For 1, I see the noun phrase “木材加工の勉強” as target of the verb phrase “しています”.

   For 2, I see the noun phrase “木材加工” as target of the verb phrase “勉強しています”.

   Appending “を” after the noun phrase “木材加工の勉強” and “木材加工” respectively feels natural to me for some reason.

   Note I’m using “noun phrase” and “verb phrase” non-technically, and to mean “a phrase that acts like noun/verb”.