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Anonymous Posted 16 years ago
Grammar

SVA

This question was asked in an nation wide examination in Malaysia recently

1) There is/are an apple, oranges and some books on the table.

Should it be "is" or "are". My automatic response was "is" but the answer given is "are" which has caused a lot of confusion among the teachers. Logically speaking, neither option seems appropriate as there are both singular and plural objects in the sentence .

Please help!!

regards

Ganesh
  

Top answer

Hi, Are- is the correct answer because there are more than one subjects in the sentence. This is my approach toward this sentence which I thought was oddly constructed either by design or by weakness. The confusion, to me, comes from the verb and subject combination, precisely, " are " with " an apple".

— Dimsumexpress

  • Hi, Are- is the correct answer because there are more than one subjects in the sentence.
  • This is my approach toward this sentence which I thought was oddly constructed either by design or by weakness.
  • The confusion, to me, comes from the verb and subject combination, precisely, " are " with " an apple".
  • " is grammatically correct, however, confusing as the " are an " is a wrong "verb/ subject " combination.
  • I think it would make better sense to rewrite it as: There are oranges , an apple and some books on the table".
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3 Answers
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Hi,
Are- is the correct answer because there are more than one subjects in the sentence.
This is my approach toward this sentence which I thought was oddly constructed either by design or by weakness.

The confusion, to me, comes from the verb and subject combination, precisely, " are " with " an apple". We should notice, " There are an
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AnonymousShould it be "is" or "are".
Both are acceptable. When you have a "there" construction with a compound expression, you may make the agreement with either the entire compound expression (1) or with the first noun in the compound (2).

(1) There are an apple and a book on the table.
There are an apple and some oranges on the table.
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Thank you so much for the explanation. That clears the air for me. I'll pass this on to the teachers, they'll be glad to know that they haven't been making fundamental mistakes in teaching grammar.

regards

Ganesh
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