There is a table and a chair in the living room.

As nobody has replied to my question, I thought that perhaps it's best to start my own thread. Admittedly, I did hijack the other thread for my own purposes.

nelson13 said:

I have that book by Martin Hewings, but I can honestly tell you that Mr Hewings will even say THERE IS A TABLE AND A CHAIR is standard English.

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5jj said:

I haven't a copy of Advanced Grammar in Use to hand, but I would be surprised if Hewings said that that was standard English.

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I do not understand why nelson13, 5jj and bhaisahab (who liked 5jj's post) object to this construction. I'm missing something, but I don't know what.

What is wrong with 'There is a table and a chair in the living room'? The verb agrees with its nearest complement, so why is this sentence problematic?

And why then do we say:
There is a chair and a table in this room NOT There are a chair and a table in this room?

[...]

there is / there are

In your example of there is, Tanya, it is as if the items are being counted separately:
There’s a chair and there’s a table in the room SO there’s a chair and table in the room.

But note:
There are three chairs and a table in the room.
There’s a table and three chairs in the room.

Learning English | BBC World Service

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Rover_KE said:

Normally, the verb agrees with its nearest complement.

'There is an apple and three pears in the fruit bowl.'

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Anyone care to comment?

Thank you in advance.

Chicken Sandwich said:

I do not understand why nelson13, 5jj and bhaisahab (who liked 5jj's post) object to this construction.

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I don't object to the construction. I merely said that I would be surprised if this sentence, as it stands were considered standard English.

What is wrong with 'There is a table and a chair in the living room'? The verb agrees with its nearest complement, so why is this sentence problematic?

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That is not the sentence I was talking about.

5jj said:

That is not the sentence I was talking about.

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I see. OK, you were talking about 'There is a table and a chair.' As nelson13 chose to capitalise all the letters, I thought that he objected to the fragment with regard to the verb form (the subject matter of the thread).

I've taken a quick look at the relevant pages in Advanced Grammar in Use (second edition) and this sentence is nowhere to be found.