'It is no noun' VS 'It is not a noun' [duplicate]

In one English student's book i encountered the following sentence:
"The weather was no obstacle to my expeditions."

As i understand the essential constrain is:
[1] Subject + is + no + noun

Apparently it's a kind of negation. But i can't find any grammar rule for this constrain.

It's similar to "The weather was not an obstacle to my expeditions.":
[2] Subject + is + not + a + noun

Or "The weather had no obstacle to my expeditions.":
[3] Subject + has + no + noun

But seems it doesn't fit into them. What a grammar constrain is it? Which one of ([2] or [3]) constrains is it closer to?

Solution 1:

The word no is a determinative in English. Determiners are words like a, the, this and so forth which usually occur in Determiner function within noun phrases. You can sometimes think of the word no as being the equivalent of the number zero. It is rare for us in English to say:

• I have [zero time]

or

• I have [zero pens]

We prefer to use the negative determinative no instead:

• I have [no time]
• I have [no pens]

Notice that the word no belongs with the noun phrase, not with the verb. Using a negative determiner in this way can make the polarity of the sentence negative. For this reason the meaning of the sentences above is similar to what we would see if we make the verb phrase negative and didn't use negation within the following noun phrase:

• I don't have [time]
• I don't have [any pens]

In short, The weather was no obstacle to my expeditions has the same literal meaning as The weather was not an obstacle to my expeditions. However, the first may be seen as being more emphatic. It seems to suggest that the listener might have expected the weather to be an obstacle, but it wasn't.