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I know for a fact that you can use plural nouns after "there's", which is an existential construction. I encountered a post on Stack Overflow today which went like this:

. . . this is questions.

Now, of course it was ungrammatical because what the poster actually meant was "these are questions", but that's not my concern.

Is there a context where "This is questions" would ever be grammatical? I'm thinking it should be a standalone sentence, "this" being its subject and "questions" or any other plural noun, its predicative complement.

I took a peek at the Wikipedia article on existential clauses but there was no mention of "this". Considering it's traditionally classified as a demonstrative pronoun, I would think it would've been listed there.

Community
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M.A.R.
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    I posted this in chat, but I think it might be helpful here as an example : "This is not speculation. This is facts, based on what we've seen first-hand," – ColleenV Mar 30 '17 at 15:05
  • @ColleenV I want it to say 'these are the facts' or 'this is fact'. Grammar is hard! – WRX Mar 30 '17 at 15:13
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    @Willow I want to reword that as well, but I have found quite a few examples of that type of usage after I looked. This post in chat made me go looking: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/36388301#36388301 – ColleenV Mar 30 '17 at 15:14
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    @ColleenV At the risk of looking like an idiot, I'm not sure that is grammatically correct, given that you're talking about "facts" in the plural? Definitely the sort of thing people might say though. – SteveES Mar 30 '17 at 15:30
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    Only if "questions" stood for (was the name of) something like a period of time devoted to questions, at a public forum or town council, for example. Please be seated, Mr Jones. This is "Questions" not "Comments". – TimR Mar 30 '17 at 15:36
  • @SteveES I'm not saying it's grammatical - just that it is an example that has some traction in common usage that folks might want to consider when answering. If I knew what I was talking about here, I'd write my own answer :P – ColleenV Mar 30 '17 at 15:51
  • I guess an example in extremely common usage is having "data" be singular. E.g. "This is data we have collected.". – SteveES Mar 30 '17 at 15:59
  • @Lambie I assumed any context. There are utterances which are ungrammatical in most contexts, but linguists don't declare them as such because some bizarre context allows them to be grammatical. If you're looking for the context of the quote which I'm sure was an ungrammatical use, it was an NAA (Not-An-Answer) on SO that began with "this isn't answer. this is questions . . . " while proceeded to ask just one question. – M.A.R. Mar 30 '17 at 18:20
  • The slightly more complete quotation (a link would be even better, if the post hasn't already been deleted!) indicates that the poster might actually have wanted to write, "This isn't [an] answer. This is [a question]." If it really was posted as a standalone sentence, or even the beginning of a sentence, rather than the end, one has to work harder to make an example that might be considered correct. I would have preferred if the original question here had clearly indicated that it was quoting the entire sentence whose grammar was suspect, along with the sentence before it. – David K Mar 31 '17 at 13:55
  • @David pretty sure it's deleted by now. It was an NAA on SO, and they don't last for more than a couple of hours usually. And I'm pretty sure it was ungrammatical. (It said "this is questions" but proceeded to ask only one question) – M.A.R. Mar 31 '17 at 13:58
  • Right, got all that, but the slightly more complete quote gives information about exactly how the example cannot be grammatical, and how the error most likely came about. It seems more likely that the mistake was to type "questions" when "a question" was intended, not that the poster got the number of "these" and "are" wrong; and someone who leaves out the "an" in "an answer" is probably a non-native speaker or a sloppy typist, so errors such as "questions" instead of "a question" are hardly surprising. – David K Mar 31 '17 at 14:15
  • @David indeed, I'm pretty sure they were non-native, and their usage was ungrammatical and faulty. But I didn't give up on the chance of an interesting discussion of the sentence, and again, I assumed any context, because there are odd contexts where normally ungrammatical things become grammatical. I had something like Araucaria's answer below in mind. – M.A.R. Mar 31 '17 at 14:20

9 Answers9

20

Here's an uncommon situation where it could work: when the antecedent of this is singular. It occurs in Laura K. Lawless, The Everything French Phrase Book:

The only exception to this is questions.

J. Siebeneichler
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    But isn't the subject in this sentence "the only exception" and not "this"? I was looking for an example where "this" is the subject. – M.A.R. Mar 30 '17 at 14:25
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    I would kind of like to rewrite that sentence as "Questions are the only exception to this rule". – ColleenV Mar 30 '17 at 14:27
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    @M.A.R. The subject of the sentence is "The only exception to this" - within which the head noun is "exception", not "this". (which is what you were getting at, I think) – Araucaria - Not here any more. Mar 30 '17 at 19:39
  • Well that's better than my plan to end a sentence with "this is" and start one with "Questions". – Joshua Mar 31 '17 at 19:04
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You could use that phrase if you were talking about the word "questions" itself as a singular object, although it would probably be surrounded by quote marks when doing this. E.g.

[blah blah blah], this is "questions" used in context.

Or

An example of this is "questions".

Another way to get this situation would be if a singular object was named after a plural. A common example would be nicknames, e.g. "Bones" in Star Trek. Another example:

This is Questions. We call him that because he asks a lot of them.

SteveES
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As long as the this is perceived as singular and the questions are perceived as plural there's no problem.

Consider the following example:

There's only one thing you need to ask, and this is questions.

Araucaria - Not here any more.
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  • +1 English only requires the verb to agree in number with the subject. It doesn't require an object or complement to agree. The complement normally will have the same plurality because of the meaning of "is", not because of grammar rules. – James K Mar 31 '17 at 15:15
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    "that is" would be better here. – Lightness Races in Orbit Mar 31 '17 at 16:09
  • @BoundaryImposition There's no doubt about that - but it wouldn't answer the question! – Araucaria - Not here any more. Apr 01 '17 at 15:22
  • No, but at least it wouldn't answer the question wrongly :) We don't make up phrases in order to create answers! – Lightness Races in Orbit Apr 01 '17 at 23:52
  • @Araucaria: There is more to language than grammar. I could tell you that "the clouds are made of hippos" but it wouldn't mean anything. – Lightness Races in Orbit Apr 02 '17 at 00:56
  • @BoundaryImposition A grammatical sentence is a grammatical sentence. It cannot, therefore, be "wrong". The question asked if that could be a grammatical sentence. The answer isn't "this is actually the best sounding sentence, I don't like that one". That would be the answer if I was an idiot and couldn't answer the question. :) – Araucaria - Not here any more. Apr 02 '17 at 00:56
  • @BoundaryImposition "The clouds are made of hippos" is not wrong, even if you cannot imagine a good context for that sentence (most people could imagine a good context for it - but that's not relevant. The OP asked if their sentence could ever be grammatical - which, of course, it can). – Araucaria - Not here any more. Apr 02 '17 at 12:23
  • @Araucaria: Yes, it's perfectly grammatical. As I said, there is more to whether a phrase makes sense than just grammar. Semantics matter too. – Lightness Races in Orbit Apr 02 '17 at 14:05
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You could use "this is questions" in a context where questions is a verb, like "The man who does not recognize what this is questions whether it is useful."

This is really splitting "this is" and "questions" across two different phrases, though; I can't see how "this is questions" could be used as a standalone sentence.

stangdon
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Using plural nouns after "There's" is considered poor grammar even though you will hear it used by some native speakers, as in "There's questions to be answered." (Bad Grammar). The reference for it cited by OP simply says that you will see it used, but does not comment on the correctness of it. Probably because this is ultimately a philosophical issue. The answer is A) You will see it used, and B) it is still not considered grammatical.

To make "this is questions" work in the sense you want (not by a trick of splitting/splicing different phrases), this can refer to a thing/concept which in turn may be or consist of questions. But it still sounds weird.

"She knows what he wants, and this is questions."

Stew C
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You could get this is questions in a sentence in various ways. This doesn't seem to be in any of the previous answers:

"This is mine?"

"Don't keep asking those this is questions, they should be 'is this' questions."

(This post doesn't necessarily constitute an endorsement of the position stated in the exchange.)

Glen_b
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I would still argue that it's ambiguous, but you might consider a teacher handing a student a sheet of paper with questions written on it saying:

This is questions for you to consider as you write the essay.

In the same vein, if you wanted it to be a stand-alone sentence, try this:

I have provided a couple sheets of sample homework assignment problems to get you started. This is questions. This is answers.

It's the same phrasing, where because of context, the object of "this" is actually just implied and might be "sheet of paper" or "list".

Blackhawk
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That would be correct if you were introducing your pet kitten or puppy.

Q. "What a cute puppy - whats his name?"

A. "This is 'Questions', because he's always asking questions"

ColleenV
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Criggie
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1

If the quoted text had been followed by multiple questions, it might have been interpreted to mean, "This [post] is not [an] answer. This [post] is [a set of] questions."

I think an argument could be made that all bracketed words except "an" can be dropped from the quoted sentences above, with a result that might be a bit informal or even awkward but that would have agreement between singular and plural where it is needed.

David K
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