Subject Question

[jlh3090]

In the sentence:

There have been several rumors about the President's plans.​

Is "have been" is the verb, and "There" is the subject?
The second part of my question is if that is the case, what part of speech is it acting as?

question #2:

Where are your books?
​

Is the subject in this case, books, or your/"you understood" thing?

 

[Buddhaheart]

“There’, like ‘it’, is the expletive (an empty subject; a temporary substitute for the real subject). The true grammatical subject is ‘rumors’. To analyze this sentence, rearrange it to read ‘Several rumors about the President's plans have been (…).’ Both ‘there’ and ‘rumors’ are nouns.

‘Books’ is the subject. Rearrange the question into a statement for analysis thus, ‘Your books are (…).’