Whose Is It (の)

の chains freely: ハワイのマウイ島のホテルの朝ご飯 stacks four nouns into one phrase, “the breakfast of the hotel of Maui Island of Hawaii,” with no extra connector needed at each step. English needs “of” repeated or a string of possessives; Japanese just keeps reusing の.

This is a completely different job: の standing in for a noun you don’t want to repeat, “the one.” 黒いの means “the black one,” letting an adjective carry the whole phrase without ever naming what it’s describing. Context supplies the missing noun, the same way English “I’ll take the black one” doesn’t need to repeat “shirt” or “bag.”