Hello guys,
I'm currently thinking about these four sentences:
1. There is a lot of problems.
2. There are a lot of problems.
3. There is lots of problems.
4. There are lots of problems.
I have the feeling that only sentence 1 and 4 are correct.
Usually, I would have said that sentence 2 is fine, but "a lot" is singular, or not? :-o
Cheers!
Nightmare, Hi!
Can I ask you something? You probably know that the number of the verb agrees in grammatical concord with the number of the subject. This is a different kettle of fish from the "Two women is enough", where we take into account the notional value of "two women", which is singular in terms of quantity and which prompts "is". This notional consideration has no purpose in your sentence.
Okay, let us push agreement aside for a while and focus on finding the subject in the sentence.
But how? You know how! Do not be afraid. In questions ... yes! subject-verb (operator) inversion.
There is a lot of problems.
Is there a lot of problems?
It is either 'there' is the subject or the subject-verb inversion does not always work in interrogatives. I opt for the for the former.
We are still not out of the woods, Nightmare. :-( Expletives! What are they? They are words which mean nothing but are needed to fill an obligatory space in a sentence. Obligatory means these spaces that expletives occupy can't ever fall vacant. What is the problem with expletives when we are talking about agreement? The problem is that expletives have no referents, that is, they do not refer to anything. In terms of meaning they are empty. If they are empty, how do we know whether they are singular or plural? :halfrobo::multi::turn-l:
a lot of versus lots of
They can precede a singular non-count noun, plural nouns and pronouns.
a lot of chocolate :tick:
lots of chocolate :tick:
a lot of people :tick:
lots of people :tick:
a lot of them :tick: