There was lots of different folks

Question

Folks, I've got a question that has to do with the tendency of English natives to use was instead of were in there-constructions when were should grammatically be used. So, the question is do people really use was instead of were in this case as often as they say there's instead of there are in the present (which I do know they do quite often)?

There was lots of different folks in our mansion.
There was four quinces and one long-ago-dried camomile flower, which I had once accidentally encountered in the forest, in the drawer.

An interesting wrinkle here is whether to treat a collective noun, such as “the family,” as grammatically singular or plural. Google Ngrams shows that “family was” is much more common than “family were” today, but the opposite was true in the 1800s. — Davislor, Feb 05 '23 at 15:05
...also Can we use "there is" for plural nouns? and Using "there is" with plural nouns and The use of "there is" and "there's" and There's or there are and "There is some" or "There are some"- which is correct? AND OTHERS! — FumbleFingers, Feb 05 '23 at 15:56
@Davislor: I suspect that just reflects the fact that Americans (who favour singular for *family*) don't completely dominant C19 texts indexed by Google. — FumbleFingers, Feb 05 '23 at 15:59
@FumbleFingers No good guess, but, I checked both the AmR and BrE corpuses. I do have the impression that collective nouns taking plural verbs is more common in Britain, and always considered an “error” in America. For example, the BBC’s “Learning English” website claims that both “the government is” and “the government are” are correct, but in American English, we always say “the Administration is.” — Davislor, Feb 05 '23 at 17:13
@Davislor: My perception is that Brits are more flexible than Americans when it comes to things like this. We tend to change the plurality of nouns like government, police, family according to whether the context suits a single entity or multiple members of a group. — FumbleFingers, Feb 05 '23 at 17:21
@FumbleFingers To put some numbers on it, “Conservative government is” is about nine times more common in the BrE corpus than “Conservative government are,” but “Biden administration are” and “Trump administration are” do not appear in the corpus at all. — Davislor, Feb 05 '23 at 17:21
Some more numbers, from site-specific searches of The Guardian - "but the family is" 2630 results, "but the family are" 1640 results. Trying the same two searches on The New York Times returns 81 and 87 hits - but I think those values are meaningless because NYT is behind a paywall and can't be properly searched. — FumbleFingers, Feb 05 '23 at 17:38

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 05 '23 at 08:50

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[1] There was/were [lots of different folks in our mansion].

[2] There was/were [four quinces and one long-ago-dried camomile flower, which I had once accidentally encountered in the forest, in the drawer].

The number of the whole NP depends on the number of the word that is complement of the preposition "of". "Folks" and "quinces" are clearly plural so the verbs should also be plural, i.e. "were".

In informal style, however, especially in present tense declaratives with reduced is, many speakers treat "there" as always singular: they say There's lots of different folks in our mansion instead of There are lots of different folks in out mansion.

answered Feb 05 '23 at 08:50

BillJ

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I sometime think that in many informal British accents it is awkward to pronounce they're differently from their and there. – Michael Harvey Feb 05 '23 at 10:16
@MichaelHarvey So much so that the difference doesn't exist anymore. I have a standard British accent and it has never even occurred to me to pronounce they're differently from there or their. We understand the meaning from context. – Mousentrude Feb 05 '23 at 18:50
This does indirectly give the answer to the question, but in rather a roundabout way. It would be a better answer if it made it clearer that the answer is no, people do not treat there as inherently singular as commonly in past-tense declaratives as they do in reduced present-tense declaratives. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 06 '23 at 01:55

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 05 '23 at 08:29

In both cases, the plural would be considered "correct" and would be the form used in careful writing. The singular would be a very common "mistake" in spoken English.

You do get (possibly) correct use of a singular when the sense is "a group" or "an event". Eg. "There was a lot of folks in the mansion". "What was happening? — There was people eating" You also see "was" with implied parallelism "There was a short cat and a big dog"

In speech you can't "edit", and you tend to form sentences in response to questions:

Who was in your ~~mansion~~ block of flats?

There was ... lots of different people...

The speaker will tend to use "was" because the question did too.

(mansion seems to be the wrong word. It means stately home. I suspect you are using the Japanese word which sounds similar.

In carefully written English, you would not use "was".

There was lots of different folks

2 Answers2