Consider the sentence "There exists no language or dialect in the world that cannot convey complex ideas."   "There exists" is beyond my comprehension because I only know of many forms of "there + be" structures such as "there has been..., there have been..., there was/were...., there is/are..., there will be....  My question is: what is the difference between "there + be" and "there exist/s"? The word "exist" is an intransitive verb, so may an intransitive verb be used with "there". Can you give me more examples where an intransitive verb other than 'exist' is used after "there"?
121114
The existential 'there' is usually followed by a form of the verb 'to be', used as a pure copula.   For instance, rather than saying, a wrench is on the bench, you'd say there's a wrench on the bench.  Biber, Conrad and Leech (2002) list a number of syncategorematic/copular verbs which can also follow the existential 'there', eg:  There used to be a house ... there's supposed to be a plot ... there seems to have been a mistake ... there's said to be a ghost ...   They don't make a distinction which I've noticed about what I call 'emergent-type' verbs, always used in the past, describing, as I see it, an action which has emerged, but seems as yet incomplete, eg:  ...there arose such as clatter ... there appeared a great multitude ... there emerged, out of the freshly tilled soil, ...   I noticed today another type which I hadn't clocked before ... the use of the intransitive after 'Once upon a time', eg:  Once upon a time, there lived ...  I can't think of an instance where you'd use a transitive verb in this construction.  Are there any other types of verbs that can follow the existential 'there' in declarative sentences that you know of that I can add to my list?
60523
I was thinking about these negations. Do these mean the same thing?     There is no point in ...   There is not a point in ...   or:     I have no clue   I do not have any clue     etc.
97814
I wanted to get the usage of There’s clarified. I have read sentences like:     There’s a lot of projects on that topic.   It appears to me that There’s applies to a lot of projects, rather than to the projects themselves. Is that right? If that’s the case, is     There’s many students standing there.   not grammatical?
43261
I believe it well established that the choice of whether to use "There is" or "There are" with the phrase "a lot of" depends on the following word. For example, you would say:   There is a lot of wine. There are a lot of cars.   What is the right form to use for a pair of, a bunch of, a group of, etc.?
12826
Would you please tell me which tenses are suitable here?  ... the sun (KEEP) burning forever? Sometime in the next twenty-five years, a spaceship with a human crew (LAND) on Mars.  My grammar book gives only two options: &quot;to be going to + verb&quot; and &quot;will + verb&quot;. But I wonder the reason why I should avoid using the &quot;continuous present&quot; tense.
8207
What is the difference between the EXISTS and IN clause in SQL?  When should we use EXISTS, and when should we use IN?
71872
I'm a non-native English speaker, and my automatic spellchecker seems to accept both therefore and therefor. Is one orthography preferred ? Is that a British vs. American difference ? Or an old vs. more recent orthography ? Or something else ?
7235
Here's my problem:  I've been confused about the placement of adverbs in present/past perfect phrases. For example, which sentence would sound better:     "We had been slowly drifting down the river when a bear attacked."      or      "We had slowly been drifting down the river when a bear attacked."   Personally, I'd go with the former, and this led me to believe that if the sentence contains both "had been" and a verb, the adverb should be placed after "had been"--if the adverb is indeed modifying the verb.  This, however, led to me to think of other uses of the present/past perfect, where another verb isn't present. The is the best example I could formulate:     "He has always been an academic and a charitable person."   See, right there, always--an adverb of frequency--was placed in between has and been.  Does this mean only adverbs of frequency (e.g., always, usually, etc.) should be placed in between such constructs?  A final example to put this topic over the edge is "He had been either sick or exhausted." Now, if you were to move "either" in between "had been," would the sentence be grammatically incorrect? I've noticed that the former is used more frequently, but the sandwiched version doesn't sound wrong either.  Thanks!
46354
It's not like there's anything else to do.   Shouldn't the speaker say: "There's something else to do." ? so what's the meaning of the sentence and what's the difference between the two of them? Thank you,
58044
Both are in the present perfect, but one uses the verb 'to go' and the other 'to be'. Is there a rule for this?  Is there any chance that the differences between "I have been" vs. "I have gone", are differences in English dialect (I don't know if this is the right word).  Edit Could I say that North American English speakers use "I have gone", and maybe U.K speakers say "I've been"? Or vice versa.
844
I'm working with the universal and the existential quantifiers and I was wondering is there an order of operations that applies to them? What is the difference between   $(\forall x)P(x)(\exists x)Q(x)$  And  $(\exists x)Q(x)(\forall x)P(x)$  Lets say we have this relationship  (a) $[(\forall x)P(x) \vee (\exists x)Q(x)] \implies (\forall x)[P(x) \vee Q(x) ]$
46408
Is there a noun that denotes "things which exist"?  The only noun form of existence that I can find/think of is "existence" which is the condition of existing, not the things which do.  It's to summarize the tools for a given task that already exist, in a presentation outline (so it needs to be a single word, but I can't give an example sentence!).  The other headings are RCA/Techniques/Lacunae.    ETA: Beings implies a certain amount of animacy, which these things definitely don't have.
117820
I think the question is rather philisophical. I wonder if articles are used to make what we say more clear and using zero/indefinite article with the noun known or already introduced can be the reference to that noun or any other since we do not specify. Like here:  I was walking with some friends. Friends were very funny. We made a stop. After making a stop, we moved on.  The grammar tells us - use &quot;the&quot; when referring to something known. But what if I do not use &quot;the&quot; - can it refer to those friends/stop, since I do not specify? Will it be a lie to talk like this, and what do native speakers think in such situations? Will it really be a grammatical mistake? Thanks.
108398
Well we know that is is the correct form for singular and are is the correct form for plural, right?  As such "There is a great pizza place in Chicago" would be correct in prose or dialogue as would "No, actually there are many great pizza places in Chicago."  However, I hear and occasionally myself say, "If you go to Gino's, I'd stick to the one downtown, but there's several locations now."  So my question is: Is this tense mismatch an eccentricity of speech, or is there any basis for this contraction of there's in plural?  Are you hungry now?  Edit: My question specifically asks for an irregular usage concern. Of course I know what it's supposed to say.
24451
While adding to an Answer to  question, I needed to use the above phrase, and I suddenly realised I was unsure whether to write "is" or "are".   There is more than one way to skin a cat. If there are more than one species of cat, we will flay each species differently.   I don't think that second example above sounds quite right to me (disregarding the meaning - sorry!), but in my original Answer I felt "is" would have been even worse.  Is "are" always wrong here? If so, what exactly is the rationale? If not, is there a case where it's unquestionably preferred – and why is that?    Note that in both the problematic Answer and my example attempting to mimic the same context more briefly, the writer doesn't know how many there are. There may be one, more, or even none.  Getting even more specific, the writer might have an opinion on how many there might be, and wish to convey his leanings by choice of verb form if language allows this to be done succinctly.
58760
In school, I was taught whenever coming across the pattern "either..or" or "neither..nor", we should always consider the noun/pronoun nearer to the verb when deciding which form to use.   For example:      Neither my parents nor John _______ (agree) with that.   In this case, we should use "agrees" instead of "agree" since John is closer to the verb.  Then I have a question. What if when there is only "either" or "neither"?  For example:      There are two particles: quarks and gluons. Neither ________ (detect) in the lab in isolated form yet.   In this case, should I use "has been detected" or "have been detected"?
53449
As a non-native speaker, I cannot grasp any difference between the expressions "here we go" and "there we go": both expressions seem to underline an event that is going to happen immediately.  Is there any subtle usage detail that I am missing?