"No less an authority"

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!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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!

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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'.

"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!