r…@elmo.lz.att.com (Ralph T. Edwards) writes:

>Important cases where B is the subject include:
>There are three reasons.
>"*There is three reasons" makes my teeth hurt.  Never-the-less it is
>becoming increasingly common.

Very interesting food for thought.

 English generally requires Subject-Verb Agreement.  So for people who
can say "There is three reasons," it seems that "There" must be the
subject of the sentence, and that it must be singular.  So maybe our
analysis of this sentence-type is changing. Alternatively, I suppose,
the verb could be lacking agreement and simply be the default present
tense, which would suggest that the SVA requirement is changing.

I wonder, though, whether people can really say,
"There _is_ three reasons."  I haven’t heard this, but I have heard
"There’s three reasons."  In this case, there’s a third possibility,
namely that the ‘s clitic (or whatever it is) is gaining increased scope,
so that it can be used in some plural contexts.  And this could just be
a lexical change (possibly motivated by phonology), rather than a syntactic
one.

 - Jay Rifkin                           (jirif…@ruccs.rutgers.edu)
————-
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety."    - Benjamin Franklin