There's vs there are

[riverkid]

Originally Posted by Naamplao

"There's papers on the desk" may be spoken this way but it is wrong grammatically.

Let's take this one step at a time, Naamplao. "There's papers on the desk" is not wrong nor is it ungrammatical.

"It is important to remember that formal and informal refer to styles of expression, not standards of correctness. Informal English has its own rules of grammar and is just as logical as formal English."

Introduction. The American Heritage Book of English Usage. 1996

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Nonstandard English
There are many expressions and grammatical constructions that are not normally used in Standard English. These include regional expressions, such as might could, and other usages, such as ain’t and it don’t, that are typically associated with dialects used by people belonging to less prestigious social groups. These nonstandard varieties of English are no less logical or systematic than Standard English. In this book an expression labeled nonstandard is not wrong; it is merely inappropriate for ordinary usage in Standard English.

...

It is important to remember that formal and informal refer to styles of expression, not standards of correctness. Informal English has its own rules of grammar and is just as logical as formal English. You can be serious using informal English, just as you can be comical using formal English. The two styles are simply used for different occasions.

Introduction. The American Heritage Book of English Usage. 1996

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Originally Posted by Naamplao

A lot of speaking English contains words and phrases that are not grammatically correct.

This too is false. Refer to the American Heritage Book of English Usage, above.

There's is a contraction for There is. If there is a contraction for "There are" it would be like for "we are - we're"

However, there'er not only looks funny it is also extremely awkward to pronounce.

<there're> rolls off the tongue splendidly.

Results 1 - 10 of about 3,100,000 English pages for "there're".

The proper way to speak and write this phrase is
[quote]

There are papers on the table.

That is neither the proper way to speak or write it. What's proper depends upon context, register, social level and a number of other important factors.

Educated English speakers the world over use "there's + plural noun phrase", not just on occasion but normally.

[finta]

Hi Naamplao!

There is v. There are is a topic dear to my heart!

In the UK many people, even educated people, do not know the difference...just like they don't know the difference between fewer/less. I hear mistakes all the time, and it annoys me!

According to prescriptive grammar...there is precedes singular or uncountable nouns, there are precedes plural nouns.

Descriptive grammar describes how our language is currently used. In many instances, current usage involves laziness, or poor understanding of fine grammatical differences.

Or perhaps not so fine, when it comes to a differentiation of singular and plural!

If you want to speak/write in a way which impresses people who appreciate good grammar, or just to do as well as you can in English exams...stick to the rules!

finta

[riverkid]

Originally Posted by finta

Hi Naamplao!

There is v. There are is a topic dear to my heart!

In the UK many people, even educated people, do not know the difference...just like they don't know the difference between fewer/less. I hear mistakes all the time, and it annoys me!

As I said to Roboat, Finta, when you hear mistakes all the time, you have to consider whether what you're hearing is actually a mistake. Language science says these are not mistakes. There is no misunderstanding, the grammar works just fine; what else is there to language.

According to prescriptive grammar...there is precedes singular or uncountable nouns, there are precedes plural nouns.

"prescriptive grammar" is an oxymoron. If one is inaccurately describing how salmon mate, there's no science, is there? There's just uninformed opinion. That's exactly what prescriptive grammar is, badly uninformed opinion.

Descriptive grammar describes how our language is currently used. In many instances, current usage involves laziness, or poor understanding of fine grammatical differences.

Or perhaps not so fine, when it comes to a differentiation of singular and plural!

If you want to speak/write in a way which impresses people who appreciate good grammar, or just to do as well as you can in English exams...stick to the rules!

finta

English speakers stick to the rules, the real rules, fastidiously. Here's what prescriptive rules are, Finta.

Obviously, you need to build in some kind of rules, but what kind? Prescriptive rules? Imagine trying to build a talking machine by designing it to obey rules like "Don't split infinitives" or "Never begin a sentence with [because]." It would just sit there. In fact, we already have machines that don't split infinitives; they're called screwdrivers, bathtubs, cappuccino- makers, and so on. Prescriptive rules are useless without the much more fundamental rules that create the sentences to begin with. These rules are never mentioned in style manuals or school grammars because the authors correctly assume that anyone capable of reading the manuals must already have the rules. No one, not even a valley girl, has to be told not to say [Apples the eat boy] or [Who did you meet John and?] or the vast, vast majority of the trillions of mathematically possible combinations of words. So when a scientist considers all the high-tech mental machinery needed to arrange words into ordinary sentences, prescriptive rules are, at best, inconsequential little decorations. The very fact that they have to be drilled shows that they are alien to the natural workings of the language system. One can choose to obsess over prescriptive rules, but they have no more to do with human language than the criteria for judging cats at a cat show have to do with mammalian biology.


So there is no contradiction, after all, in saying that every normal person can speak grammatically (in the sense of systematically) and ungrammatically (in the sense of nonprescriptively), just as there is no contradiction in saying that a taxi obeys the laws of physics but breaks the laws of Massachusetts. But still, this raises a question. Someone, somewhere, must be making decisions about "correct English" for the rest of us. Who? There is no English Language Academy, and this is just as well; the purpose of the Acade'mie Franc

aise is to amuse journalists from other countries with bitterly-argued decisions that the French gaily ignore. Nor was there any English Language Constitutional Conference at the beginning of time. The legislators of "correct English," in fact, are an informal network of copy-editors, dictionary usage panelists, style manual writers, English teachers, essayists, and pundits. Their authority, they claim, comes from their dedication to implementing standards that have served the language well in the past, especially in the prose of its finest writers, and that maximize its clarity, logic, consistency, elegance, precision, stability, and expressive range. William Safire, who writes the weekly column "On Language" for the [New York Times Magazine], calls himself a "language maven," from the Yiddish word meaning expert, and this gives us a convenient label for the entire group.



To whom I say: Maven, shmaven! [Kibbitzers] and [nudniks] is more like it. For here are the remarkable facts. Most of the prescriptive rules of the language mavens make no sense on any level. They are bits of folklore that originated for screwball reasons several hundred years ago and have perpetuated themselves ever since. For as long as they have existed, speakers have flouted them, spawning identical plaints about the imminent decline of the language century after century. All the best writers in English have been among the flagrant flouters. The rules conform neither to logic nor tradition, and if they were ever followed they would force writers into fuzzy, clumsy, wordy, ambiguous, incomprehensible prose, in which certain thoughts are not expressible at all. Indeed, most of the "ignorant errors" these rules are supposed to correct display an elegant logic and an acute sensitivity to the grammatical texture of the language, to which the mavens are oblivious.

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articl...wrepublic.html

[Naamplao]

Originally Posted by finta

Hi Naamplao!

There is v. There are is a topic dear to my heart!

If you want to speak/write in a way which impresses people who appreciate good grammar, or just to do as well as you can in English exams...stick to the rules!

finta

I think we are reading from the same sheet of music. You have no argument from me on that point.

Now RiverKid....I think it is time you took your meds and calmed down!

This too is false. Refer to the American Heritage Book of English Usage, above.

Well I took your advice and did read the section on the subject of There...

Guess what!!!! It supported my and Finta's position on the manner!!

§ 63. there. 1. Grammar. The American Heritage Book of English Usage. 1996

the bolding is my emphasis not theirs

According to the standard rule, when the pronoun there precedes a verb such as be, seem, or appear, the verb agrees in number with the following grammatical subject: There is a great Italian deli across the street. There are fabulous wildflowers in the hills. There seems to be a blueberry pie cooking in the kitchen. There seem to be a few trees between the green and me. But people often disregard this rule and use a singular verb with a plural subject, especially when speaking or when using the contraction there’s. The Usage Panel dislikes this construction, however. Seventy-nine percent reject the sentence There’s only three things you need to know about this book. But when there’s is followed by a compound subject whose first element is singular, the panel feels differently. Fifty-six percent of the Usage Panel accepts the sentence In each of us there’s a dreamer and a realist, and 32 percent more accept it in informal usage. The panel is even more accepting of the sentence When you get to the stop light, there’s a gas station on the left and a grocery store on the right; 58 percent accept it in formal usage, while 37 percent more accept it in informal usage. Although this usage would seem to violate the rules of subject and verb agreement, the attraction of the verb to the singular noun phrase following it is so strong that it is hard to avoid the construction entirely.

So there....before you quote sources....make sure they say what you think they say.

I have never said that in informal speech these constructions are not said...but they are not accepted practise when it comes to formal writing...deal with it!

[Tdol]

I am locking this thread. It is generating more heat than light. Using terms like 'uninformed' is not acceptable and is not an argument against a point of view. There is nothing wrong at all with pointing out that many users do say 'there's three', but it is also important for learners to know that this will simply be marked wrong in an exam. Therefore, the usage needs to be explained and put within the context that is relevant to many learners; they will hear it in films, but cannot use it in exams. It occurs regionally and colloquially, but there are many contexts where such usage would be wrong; it would be an error to use it in a formal context. To say that it is not wrong without qualifying this is misleading because it is wrong in such contexts.