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Debpriya De Posted 16 years ago
Grammar

Existential there

Can we form negative sentences with "existential there" as in "There isn't a fly in the soup" ?
  

Top answer

I can't see why not.

— Dave Phillips

  • I can't see why not.
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6 Answers
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There are five men in the car.
We don't write the negative of the above sentence as "There are not five men in the car" .
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Why can't we write "there aren't 5 men in the car"? Both these sentences you have given are unlikely but I don't know they would be wrong.
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Perhaps one of the teachers could help us.
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Hi,



"There are not five men in the car. There are four."

This is fine.



Clive
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Thanks Clive. That was my thought (including 4 as the example).
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