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 #2 (permalink) Mon Jan 30, 2006 11:38 am There is/are |
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Hi Conchita,
I think there is a number of sounds very odd although technically as you say, number is a singular noun. I'm happier with There are a number of ... because this really means There are several/many .... The new tendency is to use the following for singular and plural and is becoming accepted: There's ... So we have There's a hair in my soup. There's a number of things wrong with this essay.
Just a few thoughts.
Alan
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| #3 (permalink) Mon Jan 30, 2006 19:49 pm There is/are |
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| Alan wrote: | | The new tendency is to use the following for singular and plural and is becoming accepted: There's ... So we have There's a hair in my soup. There's a number of things wrong with this essay. |
I agree that that's the new tendency in speech, because people are using "there's" as a single lexical unit. In writing, however, (at least where I am) "There's a number of things wrong with this essay," would not be acceptable in writing or in formal speech.
My 1992 edition of the Gregg Reference Manual (an excellent book that too few language professionals have in their library) says this:
The expression the number has a singular meaning and requires a singular verb; a number has a plural meaning and requires a plural verb.
The number of branch offices we have in the Southeast has increased in each of the last five years.
A number of our branch offices are now located in suburban malls rather than in the central business district.
When you contemplate it, you realize there are quite a lot of these singular expressions that are "invisible" to verb agreement. They include a lot of, a quantity of, a crowd of, and some more conventional ones I can't think of now. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #4 (permalink) Mon Jan 30, 2006 20:59 pm A number/the number |
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Hi,
Clearly the examples I used by their very content indicate usage in speech. The worthy Gregg is simply stating the obvious and the reference here is not really relevant. We were talking about there is/there's
Obviously when you say: The number of unemployed has risen from 50,000 to 75,000, you are talking about one number. This is quite a different kettle of fish from: A number of unemployed (exact number not known and therefore assumed to mean several) are now running their own businesses.
To offer a more up to date text, I refer to Pam Peters and her book The Cambridge Guide to English Usage (2004)
| Quote: | | The various uses of there's with plural (or notionally plural) noun phrases show how the construction is working its way into the standard. It seems to be evolving into a fixed phrase rather like the French C'est ...serving the needs of the ongoing discourse rather than the grammar of the sentence |
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Alan
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| #5 (permalink) Sat Feb 04, 2006 6:02 am There are vs. there is a number of... |
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So we agree, Alan.  |
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Jamie (K)
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| #6 (permalink) Sat Feb 04, 2006 7:58 am There are vs. there is a number of... |
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I prefer to consider a number of a phrasal quantifier, like a lot of, lots of, a great deal of, etc. The number of the noun does not then come into play-- though countability is germane:
There are a number of players on the team.
There is a great deal of excitement about the game.
There are a lot of / lots of players.
There is a lot of / lots of excitement.
There's with plural entities is a spoken phenomenon unrelated, I think, to Conchita's original concern.
.
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