Native speaker here! 1) "Construction work" cannot be counted without some other countable word or phrase before it. So one could say "a lot of construction work," "a load of construction work," "a little construction work," etc. Just not "a construction work." 2) Either way works for both of your questions. The only difference is that the sentence as it is written sounds a little formal or rhetorical. Your replacements are more natural, but not necessarily more correct. Nothing to worry yourself about. 3) "Of the second rank," though I do not feel that "of second rank" is incorrect. It just sounds less natural because it is not said as much as "of the second rank." 4) "Subject matter" does not refer to anything specific in the sentence. It is used generally, so the book could have contained some or a lot of subject matter that was interesting. Also, no one says "a subject matter." We say either "the subject matter" or "subject matter," but we do not usually count the phrase. A, or 2, or 5, or 10 "subject matters" makes no sense. Actually, I do not believe "matter" is countable at all. "Subject" is, but it is no more than an adjective in "subject matter." Ask me if you have more questions! :)

The first sentence makes no sense. Also, "hence" is a very old word. You will hardly ever hear the word in conversation, if at all. The word is only really used in books, especially older books.To be honest, I am a native English speaker and I do not think I have ever said "hence" unless I was reading a book aloud. I can't even define the word properly. That is how old the word is. The second sentence is perfectly fine.

For removing "a," it is a matter of definition. "Work" means someone's job or occupation, but "a work" means an artistic creation like a painting, novel, drawing, movie, etc. And you keep "a" in the second sentence because we almost always say "a/the/that/this baby" unless you are calling your child "baby" as if it was a name: "I love you, baby. Come here, baby." We never say "bit <noun>." We can say "bit of news" or just "news," but never "bit news." Like you said, "two bits of advice," not "two bit advice."

Well, the short answer is yes. Both sentences can mean the same thing. I could write a lot explaining how, in different contexts, they would mean different things. I could also tell you that the first one sounds outdated to my ears and how the other is unnatural, but that might be too confusing for the both of us. I can explain all this if you want me to, but they really do mean the same thing.

I had to think about this for a bit, but it should be "corresponding." I am not sure how to explain it in grammatical terms, but the verb is not being modified by "surface morphology." Actually, it has no subject in the phrase that it's in due to the placement of the commas. Maybe an example would make more sense. For the sentence to use "corresponds" it would have to go like this: "The surface morphology usually corresponds to the mechanical instabilities and could be determined by the theory of solid mechanics," but: "The surface morphology, usually corresponding to the mechanical instabilities, could be determined by the theory of solid mechanics." I hope this helps!