<p>Help here I am not a native speaker but I've studied in the US for a long time. Well today I just took the PSAT and then found this question:</p>
<p>"Although far more eloquent a speaker, the senator..... did not fare well. blah blah"</p>
<p>The question wants us to correct the "Although far more eloquent a speaker" part, I thought something's wrong with it. Most people whom I talked to, however, said there's nothing wrong with this sentence. I don't know. Is this just the native speaker's instinct? Never have I seen such type of construction being used. If "Although far more eloquent a speaker" is right, can anyone then provide some grammatical justification for it?</p>
<p>The only thing I could see wrong is the lack of the preposition "of". I don't think that's even necessary, i just remember the alternatives being WRONG.</p>
<p>This is an example of elision. The verb "is" is elided from the concessive clause.</p>
<p>Although (he is) far more eloquent a speaker, the senator ... </p>
<p>the whole phrase modifies the senator, and the construction is similar to "in spite of his eloquence," or "although eloquent," where verbs are simply unnecessary.</p>
<p>If you use "more" though, don't you have to have some object to compare with it? e.g. Although far more beautiful, Miss Hawaii got 2nd place. --> Although far more beautiful than the winner, Miss Hawawii got 2nd place.</p>
<p>yeah, there was one at the end. the other candidate or something.</p>
<p>^ Oh, okay, then I guess that wasn't the problem, heh</p>