🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jul21.190619.21438@alf.uib.no>, hlirg@alf (Roger Greenwald) writes:
>A worse one is that the New York Times usually contains at least a few
>sentences every day in which the verb does not agree with the subject in
>number.  The most common case is that of sentences that begin with "There is"
>or "there was," and then follow up with a list of items, each of which is
>singular. (There is anger and frustration in Sarajevo tonight.) But there are
>many other cases as well.

It may be regrettable, but it is also a wide-spread dialect phenomenon.
Further, the items need not be singular in the list:

	There's cats and dogs and Hallowe'en spooks in the yard!

For a number of speakers of English, this is perfectly grammatical, although it
may conflict with the usual standards.

>You can say the writers can't count from one to two; or you can say that the
>plural form of "to be" is gradually disappearing from English. The latter is a
>linguist's type of description. In this case it's probably correct, even if it
>may be regrettable.

I don't think it is a case of the plural forms disappearing in other than a
particular context which is syntcatically determined.
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_