[no student or no other students] is as intelligent as my son.
Why do we use "no other students" in the above sentence?
We do say that "There is no student in the class." Here "no student" refers to all the students which are not in the class.
So in the above sentence "no student" does not refer to all the students?
Best Answer
No X means ‘not even one’ X: not a single member of the entire group X.
Other divides the group you are talking about into two parts. You identify one of the parts, and what is left is the other part. For instance:
So whenever you see the word other you have to identify what it is contrasted with.
In your sentence “No student is as intelligent as my son”, you are speaking about a group of students. If your son is a student, he is a member of that group, and the sentence contradicts itself: it is not true that no member of the group is as intelligent, because your son is a member and he is as intelligent as himself.
So you should say “no other student”. This divides the group into two parts: 1) your son, the most intelligent, and 2) all the other students who are not as intelligent as he is.
In this case you may cast student as either singular or plural; but as Martze says, whichever you choose, the verb must agree.
I prefer the singular, because I think of your son being compared to each other student individually; but the plural won't raise any eyebrows.