"there's" + <plural noun>

[Joel S. Berson]

At 9/26/2009 07:21 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
grantbarrett at gmail.com
>  ...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}.

Am I missing something, or isn't it "there's <plural>" simply because
"there're <plural>" is unpronounceable (and few want to waste a
syllable on "there are")?

Joel

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