How is this structure formed? A case of 'inverted adjective'?

Question

Here are the structures in question:

Is there a region in the United States of America that has a pronunciation similar, .... Tuscany)?

compare with:

... that has a similar pronunciation, .....

Source: Where is standard American English derived from?

I know that some people may find this question silly, but can we actually write it in inverted form and mean the same thing?

These examples are of course different:

Someone made a different pronunciation

vs

Someone made a pronunciation different

Answer 1

Is there a region in the United States of America that has a pronunciation similar, or closer, to standard American English?

Typically, we would use "a similar pronunciation" or "a closer pronunciation", placing the adjective before the thing it modifies.  In the example above, these adjectives are themselves modified by the following prepositional phrase.  We typically place prepositional phrases after the thing that they modify.  Also, we don't typically separate a modifier from its modificand. 

In the example, we can't do all of the things that we typically do.

• a similar to the standard pronunciation -- separates the adjective and its noun
• a similar pronunciation to the standard -- separates the prepositional phrase from its adjective
• a pronunciation similar to the standard -- places the adjective after the noun, but leaves related things connected

The connections are more important than the word order.  When we have an adjective with its own trailing modifier, we place that entire phrase after the noun. 

• a different pronunciation
• a pronunciation different than I expected

I know that some people may find this question silly.

This example also places the adjective after the noun that it modifies.  The typical order for those words in a single phrase is "this silly question".  However, once again, there is a reason to place the adjective where it is.  We're not looking at a single phrase.  Here, the adjective acts as a separate argument of the verb "find".  "This question" is the direct object.  "Silly" is the object complement. 

Someone made a different pronunciation.
Someone made a pronunciation different.

In the first, "a different pronunciation" is one noun phrase, acting as the direct object and only argument of "made".  In the second, we can parse "a pronunciation" as the direct object and "different" as the object complement. 

Those are different sentences.  They have different connections and they mean different things.