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"thing" is a countable word. (source). But I can find both

no such a thing ...

and

no such thing ...

Which one is correct?

Sasan
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    Where do you frequently find such a thing as no such a thing? You really should say more about that. – J.R. Dec 12 '17 at 19:53
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    I'm a native speaker. I've never heard "no such a thing" before and it sounds incorrect. I have heard it in the affirmative, however. E.g. "How could you do such a terrible thing?" vs "No such terrible thing has ever happened here before." – Dare Dec 12 '17 at 21:05
  • This construction (not such a thing) is often thrown up in Spanish translations. https://www.linguee.com/english-spanish/translation/there+is+not+such+a+thing.html – Livrecache Dec 13 '17 at 02:11
  • @LIvrecache: that's different. "Not such a thing" is grammatical (though I can't think of many contexts in which it would be idiomatic. There probably are some, though). – Colin Fine Dec 14 '17 at 00:04

2 Answers2

6

Like those who have commented, I find "no such a thing" to be ungrammatical, and think that the instances you have found are mistakes. However, looking in GloWbE (the corpus of Global Web-based English) I find 133 hits for it, against 12745 for "no such thing" - about 1% - Looking at them I suspect that what is going on is that some people actually say "no such thing", but when writing they are unsure whether the phrase is 'supposed' to be "no such thing" or "no such a thing", and they write the latter. I cannot prove this idea.

But certainly, "no such a thing" is not grammatical in any standard English that I am familiar with.

The reason is that "no", as well as being a quantifier, is also a determiner, like "each", and cannot be accompanied by another determiner.

Colin Fine
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  • I am so happy to see you saying straight out that "no such a thing" is not grammatical in English. It annoys me no end when people waffle these things by refusing to recognize a mistake a native speaker, regardless of educational level, would not make. And it makes the point I often try to make: machines (google, ngrams, etc.) do not internalize language. Humans do. I call these: "Thanks God" mistakes. Cheers, Colin. – Lambie Dec 16 '19 at 17:26
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I was using "no such a thing" and am unsure about it and I searched... that's how I ended up here. Now I think about it -- the reason a person says "no such a thing" instead of "no such thing" is probably that, first, yes, there is such a thing, as a category; but no, there is not such an instance in that category. Now, how do you express that? How about "there is no such kind/sort/type of that thing", which would be opposite to the meaning the speaker wants to convey; "there is no such thingy", or "there are many things vaguely or approximately in that area, just none precisely as above-mentioned"... OR, the letter "a" here is a prefix, meaning "not", as in "atypical"; and therefore, "there is no such a thing" means "there is no such non-thing!"

Edit: So the person who says "no such a thing" is trying to negate "a" and not negate "thing(s)". The person is trying to say "there are horses" but "there is no unicorn" and when you put them together, and apply to the following scenario:

A: "My horse is a unicorn".

B: "There is no such a horse!"

And there you got "there is no such a thing"...

OK... Still, it looks like one should say "there is no such horse", as well as "there is no such thing"... Let's stop saying "there is no such a thing", folks.

Dhanishtha Ghosh
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Jixin Wei
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  • Hi, welcome to English Language Learners Stack Exchange! While this is interesting analysis, it is not how typical SE answers are written. Please note SE is not a discussion forum, and answers here should be evidence-based and informative. I appreciate you sharing with us your line of reasoning, but you could improve your answer by including what authoritative sources say about this matter. – Eddie Kal Nov 29 '20 at 07:43