Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[Teo]

1. There is more than one first prize winner.

2. There are more than one first prize winner.

3. More than one student is American.

4. More than one student are American.

Which do you think is correct?
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Thank you very much for your reply.

[redset]

When the subject is singular ('first prize winner', 'student') the verb is also singular - so you use 'is' in both cases.

http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/grammar/course/sentence/2_1e.htm

(I hope lotus doesn't mind me borrowing his links, it's a great site!)

[alan.es]

I think, if you want to be pedantic, that probably none of them are correct.

2 and 4 are better as:

There are more than one first prize winners

More than one student are Americans

However for me 1 and 3 sound more natural and I would guess are more commonly used, grammatically correct or not -

- on the basis that we use :

There is a table and five chairs.
There are five chairs and a table.

[redset]

How about this?
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2005/mar/21/yehey/opinion/20050321opi4.html

Wouldn't the subject here be 'one first prize winner', meaning the verb is singular too? 'More than one' obviously implies a plural in a semantic sense, but it doesn't actually affect the sentence grammatically right?


Also I'm fairly new to this, so I'm worried about giving advice that's less than good. Do non-students usually keep out of the other student forums, or do people sometimes interject with help and advice now and again?