The test sentence you presented involves the so-called anticipatory “there are (were)”/”there is (was)” clause, and I must tell you right off that it’s not a good multiple-choice grammar test because it doesn’t have a single correct and unambiguous answer. Answer choices “(B) it was” and “(D) they were” are downright grammatically wrong, of course, but either “(A) there was” or “(C) there were” could be considered correct depending on whether your teacher subscribes to the descriptivist or prescriptivist position in English grammar.
Let me explain why this is so.
In sentences that use the anticipatory “there are (were)”/”there is (was)” clause, the pronoun “there” is used as a so-called anticipatory subject. As such, “there” actually carries little or no independent meaning; “there” is made to precede the notional subject just to give this subject end-weight or emphasis. In this sentence that you presented, “He told us
(there was, there were) one man and six women applying for the job,” there are two notional subjects—“one man” and “six women.” What we have here is therefore a compound subject that intuitively should require the plural form of the verb, in which case “were” would logically be the correct answer: “He told us
there were one man and six women applying for the job.”
Using “there were” for that sentence is actually the prescriptivist position, which maintains that after the expletive “there,” the verb should be singular or plural depending on whether the subject that follows is singular or plural—the familiar subject-verb agreement rule. Although grammatically airtight, however, the sentence “He told us
there were one man and six women applying for the job”
does look, feel, and sound awkward. (I presume you can sense the awkwardness yourself.) For this reason, regardless of the obvious plurality of “one man and six women,” many native speakers of English find it more natural and pleasant-sounding to use the singular-form “there was” instead for that sentence: “He told us
there was one man and six women applying for the job.”
This preference for the singular “there was” is the descriptivist position, which maintains that since the anticipatory “there is (are)”/“there was (were)” form is mostly followed by a singular subject in actual, spontaneously spoken English, it should be accepted as the standard way of introducing a subject, whether singular or plural, that’s preceded by an anticipatory “there” clause. This descriptivist position is particularly common in American English, which deems the construction template “
There are shame and dishonor in being found to be unfit for public office” awkward and unpalatable; it would rather use the correct-sounding “
There is shame and dishonor in being found to be unfit for public office” notwithstanding the apparent subject-verb disagreement involved.
The continuing debate between the prescriptivist and descriptivist positions for the usage of the anticipatory “there” clause is what makes the test sentence you presented unsuitable in English grammar tests. The prescriptivists will always invoke the subject-verb agreement aspect to support their position, while the descriptivists will always invoke the need for natural sounding and euphonious sentences regardless of that subject-verb disagreement quirk. I doubt that they will arrive at a common ground sometime soon.
So then, since you asked for my advice, I’m saying for the record that I’m partial to the descriptivist position. I’m much more comfortable with “(A) there was” for the test sentence you presented: “He told us
there was one man and six women applying for the job.” Despite likely brickbats from the prescriptivists, I think those who take their English seriously can make the same choice with confidence and equanimity.
RELATED READING:The wisdom of routinely avoiding anticipatory “there is/are” clauses
