'There's' Before a Plural

I’m writing today with an update on my tolerance of “there’s” before a plural. But first, some background.

As I’ve reported before, I don’t like it when there's, a contraction of there is, comes before a plural. Like: "There's people inside" or even "There's a lot of people inside."

It's an unusual situation because usually a pronoun before a verb dictates the number of the verb (He is here. They are here.) But there can be different from he or they because it can work as something called the “existential there,” which does not dictate the number of the verb.

“There is a car parked on the street.”

“There are cars parked on the street.”

Notice how the verb changes even though there doesn’t? With existential there, the real and intended subject isn’t there, even though there is positioned like a subject, right before the verb. These sentences really say:

“A car is parked on the street.”

“Cars are parked on the street.”

We can tweak them a little to give them emphasis by putting “there is” in front, nudging the real subject to a sort of second-fiddle position. Nonetheless, the traditional take on these types of sentences is that this “notional subject” -- the word car in "There is a car parked on the street" or "There are cars parked on the street" -- still dictates the number of the verb (is or are).

Yet people don't always do it this way. In a lot of cases, especially when there are intervening words like a lot, people use there plus the contracted form of is before a plural.

“There’s a lot of cars parked on the street.”

Is it wrong? Not exactly. It’s considered a pretty standard idiom. But, as I’ve reported in the past, it has long bothered me anyway. That’s probably because I learned it was “wrong” before I learned that it is, in fact, okay. And usually what happens is that, once I learn something is okay, it slowly begins to sound okay to me.

So it seemed I should give a little update on where I stand today on there’s before a plural. Here goes: I still don’t like it. It still sounds bad to me. It still has a ring like “Joe want money” or “Cats is cuddly.”

Will I ever change my mind? I’ll keep you posted.

Tags: apostrophe, PRONOUNS, SUBJECT VERB AGREEMENT

This entry was posted on Monday, October 14th, 2013 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.