I would like to share with Forum readers my answer to an English-usage question that may sound too elementary for comfort, but one that actually requires a rather complicated answer. It was asked in the Forum many years back by a member who goes by the username Sky.
Sky’s question: “Are native speakers of English correct when they say the following sentences: (1) ‘There’s only five classes on the second floor.’ (2) ‘There’s many students not attending their classes.’ (3) ‘There’s only two classes I got today.’?
“Maybe I’m just not used to it? Maybe I missed out this lesson at school? I’m really confused on this matter.”
Here’s my answer to Sky:The three sentences you presented are using what’s called in English grammar as
the anticipatory “there” clause, which means a clause introduced by the
expletive “there.”
By definition, an expletive is a word that occupies the position of the subject or object of a verb in normal English word order and anticipates a later word or phrase that supplies the needed meaningful content; in such sentence constructions, “there” points to the notional subject, usually a noun phrase of indefinite character, to give more weight or emphasis to it. Similar to this construction are sentences that use the
anticipatory “it” clause, where the notional subject that follows is a nominal clause, as in “
It is hard to justify his lackluster sales performance.”
Now, the conventional rule for sentences with an anticipatory “there” clause is that the verb after the expletive “there” should be singular or plural depending on whether the notional subject that follows is singular or plural, as in “
There’s a fly in my soup” and “
There are three flies in my soup.” When the subject consists of two or more nouns compounded by the conjunction “and,” however, there are divergent schools of thought on whether “there is” or “there are” should be used.
Some grammarians prescribe that “there is” should be used when the subject consists of two or more indefinite nouns in singular form, as in “
There is apple and orange in our orchard back home”; to them, it just doesn’t sound right to say “
There are apple and orange in our orchard back home.”
Other grammarians prescribe that “there is” can be used even for a compound subject for as long as the component nouns are notionally singular together, as in “
There is fame and fortune for young people who can sing exceedingly well.” They argue that to use “there are” in such situations would yield such an awkward-sounding sentence, “
There are fame and fortune for young people who can sing exceedingly well.”
I think those grammarians have a valid point. Indeed, the problem with anticipatory “there” clauses is that they often put grammar and notion in irreconcilable conflict. So then, with all things considered, are the three anticipatory “there” sentences Sky presented grammatically correct and acceptable?
My answer is a categorical “no.” Those sentences are flawed both grammatically and notionally, so the correct thing to do is to replace their anticipatory “there is” with “there are.” As you pointed out, though, some native English speakers do speak that way—colloquially using the anticipatory “there is” regardless of whether what follows is a singular or plural subject or a compounded one.
One justification offered for this bias for using “there is” is that in day-to-day speech, the mind is normally not on the alert on whether the subject of a statement about to be uttered by the speaker will be singular or not, so the singular “there is” becomes the default anticipatory phrase. My view, however, is that this can’t validly justify the resulting serious subject-verb disagreement in the clause, so I think that such colloquialisms, no matter how widely used, don’t deserve emulation by native and nonnative English speakers alike.
This essay, 740th in the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the May 21, 2011 issue of The Manila Times
, © 2011 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. INTERESTING RELATED READING:Eight months after this essay came out, a Forum member who goes by the username English Editor asked me this question: “May I please be enlightened as to which verb is correct in this sentence: ‘There (is, are) cake and some balloons in the house’? We have a compound subject here and my first impulse is to use ‘are.’ However, I am confused. I don’t know if I should add ‘a’ before ‘cake’ (‘There is a cake and some balloons in the house’) or use ‘are’ (‘There are cake and some balloons in the house’). In the first place, should ‘cake’ be treated as a noncount noun here?”
Check out my reply to this question in my essay
“Subject-verb agreement in ‘there is/there are’ sentences.” It first appeared in my “English Plain and Simple” column in the January 21, 2012 issue of
The Manila Times, and was posted retrospectively in the Forum last November 28, 2017. I think it would wrap up nicely my position on the still contentious “there is”/“there are” usage.
