"No less an authority"

[TheParser]

On the "Ask a Teacher" forum, a member asked a question concerning this kind of sentence:

"I heard the news from no less an authority than Mr. Smith."

Would you please tell me how our two heroes would have diagrammed this toughie?

Thanks a million!

 

[philo2009]

On the "Ask a Teacher" forum, a member asked a question concerning this kind of sentence:

"I heard the news from no less an authority than Mr. Smith."

Would you please tell me how our two heroes would have diagrammed this toughie?

Thanks a million!

To my mind, the sentence is elliptical for

I heard the news from someone who was no less an authority than Mr. Smith.

whereby AdvP 'no less' is an adjunct to 'was'.

 

[Frank Antonson]

"I heard the news from no less (of) an authority than Mr. Smith (is an authority).

"less...than" is correlative adverb". This is what I think R-K would say. Ueff! I'm rusty!