"there's" + <plural noun>

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:10 PM -0400 9/26/09, Wilson Gray wrote:
>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

True, so let's try

There's lots of mistakes in that draft, {aren't there/*isn't there}?

or even "There's lots of 'em, {aren't there/*isn't there}.

They all work the same for me:  contracted "there's" fine before
plural noun, full "isn't there" in the corresponding tag totally
impossible.

LH

>
>
>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
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>  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
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org