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You're too clever a man to imagine this.

The above sentence was said by George Galloway, a man of excellent rhetorical skills.

Since he said it, I doubt it's wrong, grammatically. But, I wonder if there is an explanation for this. Because adjectives always come after the article not before it. e.g. You're a clever man.

How could this be, grammatically?

herisson
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Bright Polyglot
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  • "... adjectives always come after the article not before it" -- you will learn that there are exceptions to this rule. Therefore, the sentence is grammatical. – Kris Nov 23 '12 at 14:20
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    You could also write that as: "You're too clever of a man." I imagine, in speaking those words, the "of" dropped off, leaving you with the above quotation. If you consider it that way, you could probably come up with numerous examples of parallel constructions. "It's not that type of a place." "We don't have that fun of a relationship." – tylerharms Nov 23 '12 at 14:32
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    @tylerharms. Do you have any authentic citations to support your claims about You're too clever of a man and We don't have that fun of a relationship? As a native speaker of English, I would never say either, and I have never seen or heard them. – Barrie England Nov 23 '12 at 16:25
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    @Barrie England: I agree those two (esp. the second) sound really clunky. But "too nice of a man" does occur, and doesn't really grind my gears too much. And I can't see any real grammatical issues distinguishing nice from clever. – FumbleFingers Nov 23 '12 at 18:32
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    @FumbleFingers. Too nice of a man seems very odd to me, and it must be rare. There are no records for it in the COCA, the BNC, the OED, or nGrams. – Barrie England Nov 23 '12 at 18:49
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    @Barrie: I certainly agree that "of" is at least a bit odd. GBooks only had about 90 instances, and without it, "too nice a man" is about 20 times more common. But I'd have to say that particular "of" doesn't bother me anywhere near as much as "I wouldn't of* said this if I'd known how to talk proper"*. – FumbleFingers Nov 23 '12 at 20:48
  • @BarrieEngland: "Not that kind of a place" or "Not that type of guy" are both very familiar to me. The construction "that ______ of a _____" occurs a lot in spoken English, which is what the OP is concerned with. – tylerharms Nov 26 '12 at 14:00
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    @tylerharms: In those examples it is "that noun of a ____", here it is "too adjective a ____". That might be where the difference lies. Certainly the phrase "too clever a man" seems completely natural to me. – neil Jan 08 '13 at 12:50
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    I haven't looked it up, but my experience is that "too clever of a man" is a peculiarly American construction. I've never heard a British person use it even very informally, but I've seen it in even fairly formal US writing. – Andrew Taylor Jan 03 '17 at 13:31

2 Answers2

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This is an example of a Big Mess Construction:

  • This is too big a mess (for anyone to clear up).

You'll find the same format in a number of other cases:

a. She made too rude a remark (for me to repeat).
b. She made so rude a remark (that we were shocked).
c. I’ve never heard as rude a remark (as that).
d. He doesn’t look the type to make this rude a remark.
e. He doesn’t look the type to make that rude a remark.
f. I wonder how rude a remark she could have made.
g. Don’t be offended, however rude a remark she makes.

— The Big Mess Construction

In every one of these, the adjective must come before the article for it to be grammatical.

There are numerous academic papers on the subject, but they're heavy with jargon and hard to summarize. In other words, the name fits.

The easiest explanation is: it's idiomatic.

It's actually been around for a long time. In an unrelated search, I discovered this quote from 1576 (via OED):

No man could be able to endure so colde, darke, and discomfortable a Nauigation.

— 1576 H. Gilbert Disc. Discov. New Passage Cataia vi. sig. E.iiijv

Laurel
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    The linked paper sheds good light on the description of how this works grammatically. It's sometimes called "degree fronting," referring to the fact that words of degree (like too, so, or how) have to go before the determiner (a/an) rather than after; and they bring with them the adjectives they modify. – LarsH Mar 31 '18 at 03:04
  • Are {[Det quant] + [Adj comp] + [a] + [N]} ( [How] much longer a journey was it to your old job? and {[neg Particle] + [Adj comp] + [a] + [N]} structures (Theirs is no bigger a house than ours) structures included in the 'Big mess Constructions'? – Edwin Ashworth Feb 01 '24 at 19:20
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    @EdwinAshworth The linked paper doesn't seem to mention either of those at all. I think it would be best to ask a new question or two about it. – Laurel Feb 02 '24 at 17:19
  • "Idiomatic" appears to be an unacceptable characterization: it is necessary, in order to apply this label to a construction, to determine that the meaning is not recoverable from the combination of the words in that construction. The same meaning results from the same words in "too rude a remark" and "a remark too rude". – LPH Feb 03 '24 at 00:39
  • @LPH "Idiomatic" here isn't a synonym for "idiom", but rather "natural", like something practiced over hundreds of years until it became second nature. – Laurel Feb 03 '24 at 00:46
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It is surely grammatical. I'm still trying to find some definitive reference on the web. Meanwhile, you may want to read this thread.

This page is helpful, but again I don't think it's definitive.

To me, sentences like He is a too/so big man are never correct. We need to restructure the sentence as He is too/so big a man. Alternatively, you can safely say He is such a big man.

Terry Li
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