There is/there are

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 10:41:55 -0500, George Thompson
<george.thompson at NYU.EDU> wrote:

>I have received the following question from a student here who is
>foolishly trusting to my expert knowledge of such matters:
>"I am doing a small research project on the history of existential
>'there' constructions with plural subjects (i.e., There's three books
>on the table as opposed to There are three books).  I've looked on
>Bobcat, several databases available through the Libarary Website and
>I have found a lot of information on 'there' existential constructions,
>but not pertaining to the plural subjects, which is what I need."
>I haven't gotten back to him to enquire as to which databases he has
>used, but am otherwise at a loss.  Any suggestions will be appreciated.

For starters, see:

Miyamoto, Yoichi. 2003. On there-sentences. _Journal of Language and
Linguistics_ 2(2):246-260.
http://www.shakespeare.uk.net/journal/2_2/miyamoto.html
(Section 4 includes a number of references on "there's" + plural NP.)

Britain, David and Andrea Sudbury. 2000. There's sheep and there's
penguins: 'Drift', 'slant' and singular verb forms following existentials
in New Zealand and Falkland Island English. In M Jones and E Esch (eds.)
_Contact-induced language change: an examination of internal, external
and non-linguistic factors_. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
(Abstract here: <http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-1014.html>)

The topic has also come up on the alt.usage.english newsgroup, where John
Lawler of the University of Michigan has provided explanations for
"there's" as a frozen existential form:

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=5rkki8$7fq$1@newbabylon.rs.itd.umich.edu
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=8Ah77.754$am2.14275@news.itd.umich.edu

And here is a discussion from the "Ask A Linguist" archive:

http://linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-1998.10/msg00025.html


--Ben Zimmer