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Anonymous Posted 11 years ago
Grammar

subject-verb agreement

There's lots of food left. The Blue Book of Grammar states this sentence is correct. Since food is uncountable, wouldn't There are lots of food left correct?
  

Top answer

Anonymous food is uncountable Yes, but that has nothing to do with subject-verb agreement. 'food' is singular, so you need 'is' for your verb. There 's lots of food left.

— CalifJim

  • Anonymous food is uncountable Yes, but that has nothing to do with subject-verb agreement.
  • 'food' is singular, so you need 'is' for your verb.
  • There 's lots of food left.
  • - Correct.
  • You may safely ignore whether a noun is countable or uncountable when making subject-verb agreement.
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3 Answers
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Anonymousfood is uncountable
Yes, but that has nothing to do with subject-verb agreement. 'food' is singular, so you need 'is' for your verb.

There's lots of food left. - Correct.

You may safely ignore whether a noun is countable or uncountable when making subject-verb agreement. Only singular and plural forms ma
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This can be confusing because the phrase "lots of" is inherently plural in sense, and yet a singular verb is sometimes required.

"There is lots of food/water/wine/liquor/beer left." is correct. Furthermore, you can omit "of food/water/wine/liquor/beer" with the same sense: "There is lots left." The verb here must be singular.

In most situations, however, the phrase "there _
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AnonymousThis can be confusing because the phrase "lots of" is inherently plural in sense
Yes, but the rule is that quantifiers like 'a lot of' and 'lots of', 'a ton of' and 'tons of', and so on, are ignored for the purposes of agreement, and all you need to do is make the agreement with what comes after these quantifiers.

There is a lo
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