There is/are an apple and two pears on the table.

[White Hat]

How about this one - "There were a man and a woman onboard the yacht, who had been on a journey from the Labrador Coast in Canada" (by Aoife Barry)?

 

[Barque]

I'd use "was" and I'd omit the comma if just making a statement of fact. I'd use the comma if the context demanded it, for example if I wanted to differentiate them from other passengers. But not necessarily. Context! Context!

I'd probably say "on" and not "onboard".

There's no context for this sentence unfortunately. English depends heavily on context.

 

[5jj]

How about this one - "There were a man and a woman onboard the yacht, who had been on a journey from the Labrador Coast in Canada" (by Aoife Barry)?

You can come up with as many examples as you like, but you are not going to get a universally accepted answer.

 

[White Hat]

The fact that the above sentence was written by a native speaker of English, apparently an Irish lady, means something, doesn't it?

 

[5jj]

Not much as an isolated sentence out of context.

"There were a man and a woman on board the yacht..." - That's what I would say, but I would not claim it was the only acceptable way.

 

[emsr2d2]

The fact that the above sentence was written by a native speaker of English, apparently an Irish lady, means something, doesn't it?

No. There's no universally accepted right answer even amongst native speakers.

 

[Holmes]

There's no universally accepted right answer even amongst native speakers.

I'd imagine the following would be universally accepted as right among native speakers. Surely no native speaker would believe that "There was two people" is correct.

There were two people, a man and a woman, onboard the yacht.

Of course, I mean to speak of native speakers of standard English, not of native speakers of Ebonics and other nonstandard dialects (viz., "We was robbed!").

 

[emsr2d2]

I was talking about whether to start with "There's", "There is" or "There are" when it's followed by a singular noun then a plural noun.