there be sentences

[Yanz Jin]

Could you explain why "are " is the key to the following sentence?

There (is, are) a light bulb and a screwdriver in the drawer.

[xpert]

Could you explain why "are " is the key to the following sentence?

There (is, are) a light bulb and a screwdriver in the drawer.

That's a good question. Click here to the answer.

[Kondorosi]

The rule, as you will gather, is slightly more complicated than is sometimes taught, but not so complicated that it should cause such persistent problems.

Let us take a look at this sentence pattern:

There be X and Y.

This sentence has two subjects:

1. the expletive, number-invariant, singular 'there'; this is the structural subject because it occupies the subject territory

2. X and Y = compound (two items (X and Y) are coordinated) 'deep' or 'true' subject; true, because the state of existence expressed by the verb 'be' is associated with 'X and Y' and not with 'there'

There are two rules for subject-verb agreement that we tend to follow:

- the number of the verb is in agreement with the number of the grammatical subject (grammatical concord)
- agreement with the deep subject (notional concord)