"There Is"/"There are" depends on plurality of the first list element or not?

Question

It seems I put a stick in the anthill at ELL.

Bounty assigned by outside party, two lengthy, reference-citing answers, one "-1" (awarded the bounty), one "-2", two others scored "0" and "-2" respectively, the answers suggesting one or the other is correct, 73 comments and no consensus so far - and me, as the asker, lost without a clue what to think of the answers anymore - this is no longer "Learners' Level" question, so I thought I'd bring it here and hear what the experts have to say.

---

Original question:

Plurality of verb depending on plurality of list elements

An edit was suggested to my sentence.

There was were an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries on the plate.

In my native language plurality of the verb always follows plurality of the first element on the list. There were an orange,... sounds awkward to me, no matter what follows up. My simple solution was reordering:

There were some grapes, an orange, two apples and a small pile of cherries on the plate.

But that's not the first time I faced this situation and I'd like to know what the rules of grammar say about that - was my editor overzealous or am I trying to copy rules of my language that don't apply in English?

---

Someone linked a related question for negatives, where the situation is more clear-cut ("There is no..."). Same applies to connection with "or" apparently, per accepted answer there. Still, nothing for "and".

It seems there is a consensus that in that if the verb goes after the list, it will be plural.

an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries were on the plate.

There doesn't seem to be clear consensus for:

On the plate { was | were } an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries

Adding more to the confusion is the abbreviated form: "There's"

One last note. In North America, at least, there is a widespread use of using a singular form like "there is" and "there was", without regard for the subject item or items, and this "there is" is often shortened to "there's":

There's three apples on the table!

Could you please clarify this mess?

Answer 1

‘The Cambridge Guide to English Usage’ deals with this pragmatically, as with much else:

Existential there couples with either singular or plural verbs (there is / there are, according to the following noun phrase) . . . This formal agreement is strictly maintained in academic writing. But in narrative and everyday writing, there is and especially there’s is found even with plural nouns . . . In conversation the combination of there’s with a plural noun is in fact more common than there are, according to the 'Longman Grammar' . . . Negative statements also seem to attract there’s . . . When a compound subject follows, there’s rather than there are is selected . . .

In such cases both formal and proximity agreement help to select the singular verb. These various uses of there’s with plural (or notionally plural) noun phrases show how the structure is working its way into the standard. It seems to be evolving into a fixed phrase, rather like the French C’est . . . serving the needs of the ongoing discourse rather than the grammar of the sentence.

Answer 2

Yes, you should trust your ear. :)

This topic comes up a lot. Your question involves an existential construction.

It is safest (imo) to consider that the dummy pronoun "there" to be the grammatical subject. There are syntactic tests that can be used to sorta figure out the grammatical subject. Both the 1985 reference grammar by Quirk et al., A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, and the 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, basically consider that "there" is the grammatical subject.

In Quirk et al., page 1405, in section "The status of existential there as subject", it has:

18.46 The there of existential sentences differs from there as an introductory adverb in lacking stress, in carrying none of the locative meaning of the place-adjunct there, and in behaving in most ways like the subject of the clause, doubtless reflecting the structural dislocation from the basic clause types:

(i) It often determines concord, governing a singular form of the verb (cf 10.34 ff) even when the following 'notional subject' is plural:

• There's some people in the waiting room. < informal >

occurs alongside:

• There are some people in the waiting room.

(ii) It can act as subject in yes--no and tag questions:

• Is there any more soup? There's nothing wrong, is there?

(iii) It can act as subject in infinitive and -ing clauses:

• I don't want there to be any misunderstanding.

• He was disappointed at there being so little to do.

• There having been trouble over this in the past, I wanted to treat the matter cautiously.

Huddleston and Pullum et al. go into this in even more depth, in their section "Evidence that subject function is uniquely filled by dummy it and there" on pages 241-3.

I discussed the above because there are numerous, er, grammatical sources out there that get this wrong.

So, if we consider that the "there" is the subject, then that which is to the right-hand-side (RHS) of the BE verb is NOT the grammatical subject. That RHS has been called a whole bunch of stuff, such as "true subject", "notional subject", "displaced subject", etc. So, there is no such thing as a grammatical rule of subject-verb agreement between the BE verb and the RHS -- because the RHS is not the grammatical subject.

When teachers and "pop grammarians" and pedants say that there must be "subject-verb" agreement between the BE verb and the RHS, they are wrong. It is a bogus rule. It is like the other bogus rules like: "You must not start a sentence with a conjunction", "You must not split an infinitive", "You must not strand a preposition", "You must not use a relative 'that' to refer to a human", etc.

I've seen a lot of bad guidance, er, "rules" getting passed around as to the pseudo-subject/verb agreement. Here's one:

"there is" + < plural noun phrase > is indeed nonstandard . . . but "there's" + < plural noun phrase > should really be characterized, in current English, as merely informal/colloquial, rather than nonstandard.

Let's address this part:

"there is" + < plural noun phrase > is indeed nonstandard

for that evaluation is dubious, obviously. One can easily create contexts and examples to disprove that evaluation. For example, using the plural noun phrase "two hundred dollars",

• There is two hundred dollars in the man's wallet.

I'd think it'll be quite easy to create a context where that example sentence is acceptable.

Many instructors teach that the verb should be plural or singular depending on what that verb would be in a corresponding sentence where the RHS is the subject. Using the above example:

• Two hundred dollars is in the man's wallet.

is acceptable and grammatical. (That example uses a subject that is a measure phrase, and this issue is discussed in Huddleston and Pullum et al., CGEL, section "(a) Measure phrases", page 504.)

And so, an existential construction corresponding to that could then be:

• There is two hundred dollars in the man's wallet.

That sounds fine to me.

When the RHS includes a coordination of noun phrases, things can get confusing. Some usage guides and usage commentators prefer that the BE verb agree with the closest noun phrase for that situation. E.g.

• There is one fat dog and two skinny cats in the box.

• There are two skinny cats and one fat dog in the box.

and some still want the plural verb even when the first noun phrase is singular,

• There are one fat dog and two skinny cats in the box.

Of course, if this is dirtied up with an "or" or "nor" coordination, then existential constructions can really clash with their corresponding versions where the RHS is the subject. E.g.,

• (Either) One fat dog or two skinny cats are in the box that's sinking in the pond.

• There are (either) one fat dog or two skinny cats in the box that's sinking in the pond. (ugh)

• There is (either) one fat dog or two skinny cats in the box that's sinking in the pond.

.

Context is king. For instance,

I come from a small family. There is grandpa, mother, my big sister, me.

Hopefully an "editor" won't dare to mark that use of "There is" -- if the editor did, then that's an instant STET and a request for a different editor.

.

This post is getting long. Let me end it with this following bit of info.

A decent usage dictionary, such as MWDEU or MWCDEU, can provide useful info as to standard usage of the existential construction. In my Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage, entry "there is, there are", on pages 732-3, this is the concluding paragraph:

Jespersen notes that the invariable singular occurs mostly in the colloquial style--speech and speechlike prose--and is generally avoided in the literary style. That observation accords with our evidence. In the more complex constructions, you are best guided by your own sense of what sounds right in the particular context to avoid awkwardness and maintain the smooth flow of the sentence.

Their last sentence basically says it pretty well, imo.

Answer 3

There is/are, and it is/are are expletive sentences, which tend to be wordier and possibly confusing in subject-verb agreement.

Although the consensus of opinion is that the be verb should match the number of the subject, it sounds more natural (if you must write an expletive sentence) if the verb agrees in number with the first item in the list.

There is an apple, three oranges, and some grapes on the table. There are some grapes, an apple and three oranges on the table.

If that is too difficult to accept, avoid starting the sentence with There is/are.

They are forms that are wordier than necessary. The forms are wordier than necessary.

Answer 4

I generally consider 'there' to be a functional subject anticipating the notional subject for the obvious purpose of accessing the convenience of the most concise existential syntax. As such, I believe it should always agree with the notional subject. I suggest that the 'first item' arguments mostly come down to an ellipsis of repeated instances of 'there + be' as one contributor above has already commented, and therefore do validate use of the singular 'is/was'. Further, I would argue that ellipsis is also the culprit with phrases of measurement such as 'two hundred dollars' as they often carry the subtext 'the amount of', also validating the singular choice, as do explicit examples employed a framing device such as 'a few (of)' and 'a couple(of)'.

Answer 5

The in-between stuff amounts to an afterthought, the sentence can be reordered to show that, and when read aloud still sounds OK:

There was an orange on the plate, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries.

The preposition 'on' caries over, even with that rambling order it's still clear that all of the fruit sits on the same plate. Omitting "there" and leading with the preposition "on" also works:

On the plate was an orange, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries.

As does:

An orange was on the plate, some grapes, two apples and a small pile of cherries.