Gonna persist, here...
What about "group"? Isn't that the same idea? Yet, no one would say "There are a group of factors..." I really want to know the hows and whys on this one! Which collective nouns go with "is" and which with "are", and why isn't there a consistent rule? Thanks! :0)
Well, lessee. Let's google goofy's "There are a group of factors".
Finally, there are a group of factors, or "disability predictors," that help clinicians to identify those individuals in whom back pain is likely to lead to ...
There are a group of factors influencing project selection at this conceptual stage
... there are a group of factors which have a relatively limited number of linkages ...
There are a group of factors that combine to explain the especially damaging character of Australian land ...
Let's look at some "is a group of factors"
Finally, there is a group of factors biotic factors that are biological attributes of a community ...
The results indicated that there is a group of factors that characterize those individuals meeting minimum fitness requirements as described previously in ...
Secondly, there is a group of factors related directly to farms and determining their productive potential. Items include the type of soils, rainfall, ...
I got 16 hits for "there are" and 44 for "there is". One thing is that in other languages with a stock construction for this kine of thing it is in the singular. In German we have
es gibt not
sie geben, in Spanish
hay, as I remember, is derived from a singular form of
haber, similarly the French
il y a is singular. In all cases they are singular regardless of the number of whatever there is. I get 388,000 hits for
es gibt drei, 1,800,000 for
hay tres and 9,290,000 for
il y a trois. In English we also have the fact that it's easier to say "there's" than it is to say "there're" and the apostrophized form is probably more common in spoken language. I'd also say that what may affect your choice is whether you're talking about the group or the factors.
Help?
