I have a sentence in my book like this: 日本が アメリカによく聞かれて困る質問の一つに、”How are you?" は 日本語で何と言うか、というのがある。
and found a similar example here: アメリカでは大学への申込の手続きの一つに「なぜＸ大学に行きたいのか」ということに関してエッセイを書くというのがあります。
The part I am confused about is the の一つに... in particular, the に part. Why are we placing a location particle next to 一つ... shouldn't it just be ｘの一つは （Ｏｎｅ ｏｆ ｔｈｅ Ｘ）
Answer
In Samuel Martin's 1975 A Reference Grammar of Japanese, he calls this use of に the "copula infinitive" (p.396). But more importantly, he glosses it in English with the word "as":
うちはお客様に外人の方が多いんで、アスパラガス、ブロッコリーなどの西洋野菜がよくでます。
"As customers we have mostly foreigners, so lots of foreign vegetables like asparagus and broccoli are out for sale."
He also gives an example that closely parallels yours, using 〜の一つに ("as one of 〜"):
ハワイ群島の一つにマウイ島がある。
"As one of the Hawaiian Islands there is the island of Maui."
= "Among the Hawaiian Islands is the island of Maui."
In this example, "among" is a more natural expression in English, but "as one of" is a little closer to the literal meaning of the Japanese.
As you can see from these examples, に isn't really marking a location; it's functioning adverbially.
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