"there's" + <plural noun>

[Wilson Gray]

But isn't _lot_ peculiar?

There is a lot of money to be made, playing the stock market.

There *is(?) / are a lot of bills still unpaid, as a consequence of
playing the stock market.

There's / There're a lot a bills.

A lot of people *was / were coming.

A lot of money was / *were lost.

Et talia.

-Wilson


On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 7:21 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "there's" + <plural noun>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 3:53 PM -0700 9/26/09, Grant Barrett wrote:
>>>Here's an old 'thread':
>>>
>>>http://lloyd.emich.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0204A&L=ADS-L&D=0&m=20360&P=11051
>>
>>Thanks. Good stuff. I can't make out who the author of this line is:
>>"T. Daniel Seely and I worked on this problem years ago." It seems
>>only to be quoted; the original message is not in the archive.
>>
>>http://lloyd.emich.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0204A&L=ADS-L&P=R4463&D=0&m=20360
>>
>>Grant Barrett
>>grantbarrett at gmail.com
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> I don't recall who Seely's co-investigator was either.  One point
> that always struck me about this construction is that (for my
> intuitions/dialect) the contracted singular is fine but the plural
> obligatorily resurfaces in the tag:
>
> There's a lot of mistakes in that draft, {aren't there/*isn't there}.
> There's two men from Cleveland in the next room {aren't there/*isn't there}.
>
> (I know, there's always "ain't there", but I ain't goin there.)
>
> LH
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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