is it right or wrong ?

runCDfirst   Wed Nov 23, 2005 7:47 pm GMT
hi,

the american:"do you have some restaurants close to your place"?
runCDfirst:" there IS no restaurants"
the american:"there IS no restaurants!!"

i know that i should've said there ARE....,
but although he's a native speaker, he made the same mistake.
or maybe he didn't because it's right.
i don't know!!

help me please ?
is it right or wrong ?


thank you.
Uriel   Wed Nov 23, 2005 7:57 pm GMT
It's not common for Americans to say "there IS no restaurants" but it is common for people to use the contracted form: "there's no restaurants". Yes, it is grammatically incorrect (and we know it!), and would not be used in careful, formal speech.
Tiffany   Wed Nov 23, 2005 9:10 pm GMT
Speaking of There is/are. I sometimes contract "There are" into something that might be written "Ther'er" and when I am speaking quickly it can sound like just "There". Has this been discussed before, does anybody else do it?
Josh.   Wed Nov 23, 2005 10:01 pm GMT
Rarely will you hear someone in America say "there is no restaurants," in particularly because if the noun following the helping verb is plural, one often says "there ARE."

If you're trying to say "There is no restaurants," you would say "there aren't any restaurants." or "there are no restaurants." Personally, I think the former sentence is said more often.

And by the way, the native speaker is wrong in saying "there is no restaurants"....you can't always trust native speakers!
Travis   Thu Nov 24, 2005 1:18 am GMT
>>Rarely will you hear someone in America say "there is no restaurants," in particularly because if the noun following the helping verb is plural, one often says "there ARE."

If you're trying to say "There is no restaurants," you would say "there aren't any restaurants." or "there are no restaurants." Personally, I think the former sentence is said more often. <<

Josh, however, don't forget "There's no restaurants", which, while formally expanding to "There is no restaurants", is actually grammatical in many dialects, such as my own, where "There is no restaurants" is decidedly ungrammatical.

>And by the way, the native speaker is wrong in saying "there is no restaurants"....you can't always trust native speakers!<<

Ahem... from a linguistic standpoint, besides production errors and like, native speakers are *never* wrong, with respect to their own native dialects of course.
Kirk   Thu Nov 24, 2005 1:53 am GMT
<<And by the way, the native speaker is wrong in saying "there is no restaurants"....you can't always trust native speakers!>>

That's ridiculous. By definition, for any language, native speakers are the speakers of the language and their usage dictates which is grammatically correct in any given language, not prescriptivist notions of how language "should" be. Native speakers are also by definition the model which nonnative learners emulate. However, for various sociolinguistic reasons learners may desire to emulate certain speakers over others but that still doesn't make any native speaker's speech linguistically invalid.

<<Yes, it is grammatically incorrect (and we know it!),>>

Absolutely not. Read above.

<<and would not be used in careful, formal speech.>>

That is true.

<<Ahem... from a linguistic standpoint, besides production errors and like, native speakers are *never* wrong, with respect to their own native dialects of course.>>

Exactly. Uriel, you know I'm being sincere when I say I think you're wonderful and I love your comments but please don't start this again :)

<<Speaking of There is/are. I sometimes contract "There are" into something that might be written "Ther'er" and when I am speaking quickly it can sound like just "There". Has this been discussed before, does anybody else do it?>>

Yes, this is quite common in everyday speech. I do it all the time :) It'd be ["DEr\@`] in my speech.

<<Josh, however, don't forget "There's no restaurants", which, while formally expanding to "There is no restaurants", is actually grammatical in many dialects, such as my own, where "There is no restaurants" is decidedly ungrammatical. >>

Very true. There's a clear difference between the grammaticality of the cliticized version as compared to the form which experiences no cliticization.
Uriel   Thu Nov 24, 2005 5:54 am GMT
<<Yes, it is grammatically incorrect (and we know it!),>>

Absolutely not. Read above.


No, I doesn't agree with you, Kirk. I are of the opinion that noun-verb agreement am a good thing. That extend to singular-plural agreement, too.
Kirk   Thu Nov 24, 2005 8:37 pm GMT
<<No, I doesn't agree with you, Kirk. I are of the opinion that noun-verb agreement am a good thing. That extend to singular-plural agreement, too.>>

No one's saying nouns and verbs shouldn't agree. Where it's possible in English, nouns and verbs do agree, but they don't always agree in exactly the same way in all English dialects. Also, there are very specific and complex rules that define each dialect (whether it's considered "standard" or not--a highly arbitrary judgement), as we already saw with the example that "there is no restaurants" *is* ungrammatical in English (because no one says it that way) but English certainly allows for "there's no restaurants" in many people's speech (including my own). I am not making a "mistake" by any means when I use such native and natural forms that have long been permitted by English for millions of native English speakers.

Also, your unfamiliarity with the difference between true ungrammaticality (rooted in unattested linguistic forms) in a language and "ungrammatical" forms (only in the sense that they're not used in formal writing but in fact are used by plenty of native speakers every day) is found in the fact that you facetiously write something like "I are," which truly is ungrammatical in English (as far as I know it's unattested and not native to any varietiy of English) while the form as seen in "there's no restaurants" is spoken daily by millions of native English speakers (it's possible in my dialect and idiolect) and is thus perfectly grammatically valid.

Uriel, as I said before, I really do think you're great, and it's fine to be unfamiliar with linguistic concepts (even on a general language board such as this one I don't think anyone expects everyone to be an expert on linguistic concepts), but when people familiar with them do point out clear inaccuracies and faults in arguments it makes no sense to continue arguing against them (or at least do so and be taken seriously). I'm nowhere near an expert in chemistry and I'm ok with that, but I won't get into an argument with a chemist because I don't know enough to truly support my arguments. If I said something that chemists pointed out was an inadequate assessment of something I'd find it pointless to argue further since I would realize I didn't know what I was talking about anyway.
Uriel   Thu Nov 24, 2005 10:22 pm GMT
Language is something that people use as an interactive social tool, and therefore sociological concerns ARE inextricably bound up in the everyday, practical usage of language. Word choices DO matter. There IS always a social subtext.

It's all very well to try to transform the study of it into some abstract, ivory-tower world where all word choices are equally valid and the job of the "pure" linguist is to catalogue, not judge, but that just doesn't reflect the reality of a living language embedded in the social and cultural millieu of its normal speakers. To try to differentiate between "pure" linguistics and "sociolinguistics" is fine in the academic world, but that distinction wouldn't be found in the real world. I don't see the point in putting blinders on.
eito(jpn)   Thu Nov 24, 2005 10:28 pm GMT
>>I ain't ... You ain't ...<<

These would sound to me grammatically strange, but these are just informal, not necessarily wrong.

>>There's no restaurants.<<

This seems to me grammatically strange, but that does not mean this is wrong. As long as it is commonly used, it can be considered valid, like it or not.

Am I to understand like this, Kirk?
Kirk   Fri Nov 25, 2005 6:13 am GMT
<<This seems to me grammatically strange, but that does not mean this is wrong. As long as it is commonly used, it can be considered valid, like it or not.

Am I to understand like this, Kirk?>>

It's a form that is not used in formal writing but is commonly used by many native speakers interchangeably with "there are/there're" (like myself) in everyday spoken speech. In my experience it's generally not even noticed much and not stigmatized in everday speech, as it's quite common.

<<Language is something that people use as an interactive social tool, and therefore sociological concerns ARE inextricably bound up in the everyday, practical usage of language. Word choices DO matter. There IS always a social subtext.>>

Right and the social subtext underlying my interpersonal interactions has not been hamepered in the slightest by my usage of "there's" with plural referents. Whether this is an example of an old form which never made it to formal writing or a more recent change, it's actually quite common and a completely valid form. Delving into the sociolinguistics angle of things, it's barely noticed, especially for the frequency for which it occurs. I hear it being used all the time in normal speech even of the most educated "prestigious" speakers, and if that's not enough to make the form "valid" for you, I don't know what is. I'm just describing what the situation's actually like and the truth is that plural-referent "there's" is quite common and apparently here to stay.

<<It's all very well to try to transform the study of it into some abstract, ivory-tower world where all word choices are equally valid and the job of the "pure" linguist is to catalogue, not judge, but that just doesn't reflect the reality of a living language embedded in the social and cultural millieu of its normal speakers.>>

Putting the insistence linguistics has on descriptivist approaches aside, as I said above "there's" in conjunction with a plural referent is very commonly used by many native speakers interchangeably with "there are/there're" in everyday speech. It's barely noticed but many people do it, even tho they'd never write that way (and might deny they used it since it doesn't occur in writing). Just because a form is not used in the formal written language doesn't mean it's "degenerate" or ungrammatical. This is a great example of this. In this case, "there's" with plural referents is so common I've even heard it in semi-formal speeches.
Uriel   Fri Nov 25, 2005 6:44 am GMT
It IS grammatically and logically inconsistent to use a contraction of "is" with a plural word like restaurants. It's a quirky usage, and we are aware of that inconsistency but commonly use the contracted form anyway. I DON'T know of anybody who would use that construction on a term paper or essay -- formal language. Those are pretty much just the straight facts about how and when that particular usage is generally used, which is what runCDfirst wanted to know.
Kirk   Fri Nov 25, 2005 7:32 am GMT
<<It IS grammatically and logically inconsistent to use a contraction of "is" with a plural word like restaurants.>>

Not at all. No one ever said the patterns of subject-verb agreement could be explained with rules that worked 100% of the time. Also, you're trying to apply the domains of formal logic to explaining and regulating language, something which does not make a good fit by any means. The so-called "grammarians" who tried to make English more like Latin in the 17-19th centuries learned this. They felt classical languages like Latin were the paragon of logic and perfection in language and that languages which didn't follow their patterns were degenerate or somehow imperfect. While almost anyone recognizes this is a ridiculous argument today, you're still making the assumption that there can be "logical" and "less logical" forms of any language. Absolutely untrue in the highest sense of the word. Not true. If if were true we'd expect some languages and certain forms of languages to not communicate well or cause confusion, which is certainly not the case of plural-referent "there's.".

Also, you may not have noticed this but "there is/are" is not a verb in the sense that "eat/come/drive" are--have you ever noticed that a certain class of verbs in English (they're called modal verbs) never receive verb-subject agreement? No one says "My mom cans go to the store" or "John mights eat." As you can see, there is already a class of verbs in English which never receive verb-subject agreement (even when it's possible for other verbs) so your assumption of there being absolutes in describing English verb-subject agreement already has a clear exception which isn't even contested by prescriptivists. Back to "there is/there are." Much like the modal verbs, "there is/are" is not the same kind of verb as the "eat/come/drive" ones are mentioned above. Grammatically speaking, it's not analyzed by speakers as being the directional word "there" plus the copula (to be). Those two words are present but combined they do not equal the sum of their parts. Simply put, the "be" in "there is/there are" is analyzed by speakers (unconsciously, of course) as being something quite separate from "to be" as used in copular examples (she is nice/he is mean/they are fun, etc). That's because it is different.

Also, you calling plural-referent "there's" illogical also implies a universal absolute. If it's illogical in English then its equivalent forms should be by extension illogical in other languages. However, that's not the case--Standard Spanish only uses the singular equivalent of this verb ("hay") for both singular and plural referents, and it's the dialects which use plural forms (like "habian") for the plural referents that are considered "non-standard." The exact opposite of English! If these phenomena were truly the domain of formal logic then that would certainly not be the case. The whole arbitrariness of what is "standard" and what isn't is proven by the fact that formal Spanish insists on the form that formal English eschews, yet in both languages the opposite forms exist.

<<It's a quirky usage, and we are aware of that inconsistency but commonly use the contracted form anyway.>>

As I said before, it's not inconsistent at all or really even "quirky." As explained before, like any other grammatical rules underlying all language, the rules explaining this usage are complex and highly detailed. As explained before, the fact that "there is" is ungrammatical (unattested) in this instance yet "there's" works perfectly fine is an excellent example of this. It's not just random weirdness or speaker "laziness" but a fully-explainable and nuanced grammatical construction.

<<I DON'T know of anybody who would use that construction on a term paper or essay -- formal language.>>

Of course not--I already said it was not used in formal writing, so you won't find me disagreeing there. However, my point was that just because a form is not used in formal language does not an ungrammatical construction make. Not even close.

<<Those are pretty much just the straight facts about how and when that particular usage is generally used, which is what runCDfirst wanted to know.>>

I think it's reasonable to assume that runCDfirst was at least as (if not more) interested in how this relates to how people speak, since the context it arose in was from spoken language in the first place. The poster wasn't asking about term-paper usage. Anyway, if you're worried about confusing runCDfirst, it should be clear by now that the aforementioned usage is not used in formal writing in English but as a form used by native speakers the world over in daily speech, is entirely valid from English's point of view (and it's really not even sociolinguistically stigmatized in light of its common frequency--it's only absent in formal writing).
lida   Fri Nov 25, 2005 8:06 pm GMT
Please, those who are the native speakers. Try teach the rest of non native speakers correctly, written English. We are all aware of the dialects. Every language has got one. But non native speakers would like, from my point of view, to know formal English. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Kirk   Fri Nov 25, 2005 8:20 pm GMT
<<Please, those who are the native speakers. Try teach the rest of non native speakers correctly, written English. We are all aware of the dialects. Every language has got one. But non native speakers would like, from my point of view, to know formal English. Correct me if I'm wrong.>>

We have clearly shown which are the formal written forms in English and which are those used in everyday conversation (read the last paragraph of my latest post if you're confused about which is which--the last thing I'd want to do is confuse English learners). However, in addition to learning formal-register norms, English learners have the right to ask and find out about how real native speakers talk (and if you're modeling your speech off of intelligent, educated speakers, there's still always going to be a great divide between the formal written language and the everyday speech of even the most prestigious speakers--that's the nature of the written and spoken languages, which are essentially quite separate entities). In this instance, I delved into how people actually speak because the context which the question arose in was precisely thru contact with a native speaker in everyday speech and the poster was just curious about this particular construction's usage.

If you have any more questions about the divide between everyday spoken and formal written forms, please feel free to ask and we'll keep on trying to articulate the differences between the two :)