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It was such a hot day that we went out.
I can understand the above statement ,however, not the following...
It was so hot a day that we went out.
The Erie was large a canal that more than eighty locks and twenty equeducts were required.
My question is that why there is "a" in between of hot a day and large a canal in above sentences.Can anyone help me here please.

Nestor · Accepted Answer

Here's the long version:
I've thought about this question a lot, and I think now I've arrived at a conclusion. The meanings of the sentences don't change too much without the 'a '. They're also still grammatically correct: "It was so hot that we went out" still works as a sentence. However, the sentence gains specificity when you add 'a day'. So the 'a day' is just a predicate noun, and it helps describe what 'it' is. The same is true with the Erie canal sentence (I assume you meant there to be a 'so' before 'large'). "The Erie was so large a canal that...." What is the Erie? It's a canal. I suppose that you may only use this construction when you have an intensifier and an adjective before the noun and indefinite article. You use the indefinite article to indicate that the subject of the sentence (The Erie) is one among many of a certain type of object (your predicate noun, canal). The intensifier plus adjective describes the subject, and by describing the subject, it also "passively" describes the predicate noun.

A complicated explanation deserves a complicated rewrite of the sentence:
The Erie, which is one canal among many, was so large that more than eighty locks and twenty aquaducts were required.

Here's the short version:
You use 'a' because this type of sentence is an idiomatic way of saying something without using too many words. This is a tautology: You use 'a' because the sentence needs 'a'.

Miriam · Answer

The full grammatical explanation is that an adjective modified by the intensifiers 'too', 'so' or 'enough' can be separated from its complementation if the adjective is placed before the indefinite article of the noun phrase.

Let's take "It was so hot a day that we went out."
Adjective: hot
Intensifier: so
Complementation of the adjective: that we went out
Indefinite article: a
Noun phrase: a day...

Other examples:
"So easy a boy to teach is hard to find."
"He is not brave enough a student to attempt the course."
"She thought Japanese too difficult a language to learn."
"I have never met so easy a man to please."

It doesn't mean, however, that you cannot use a different construction.
"She thought Japanese a language too dificjuult to learn", for example, and "I've never met a man so easy to lease" are correct as well.

Miriam

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