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Articles

"There Is A" Vs. "There Is The"

Tanya TruslerAugust 6, 2015

There is a method to this madness!

The English articles a, an, and the can be tricky for students to learn. Teachers can spend quite a bit of time teaching lower-level students when to use these articles, only to have the “rules” thrown back in their faces when a sentence begins with “there” and the Be verb. When do we say There is a + noun, and is There is the + noun ever correct?

There Is A + Noun

This is a common English sentence pattern that is used to describe things (especially when followed with a location). For example, think of this sentence: There is a cat on the sofa. If a speaker says this, both the speaker and listener are probably looking at the sofa or a picture of it. The tricky thing for students is that this situation (where we can see the noun and/or we know which noun we’re talking about) usually calls for the definite article the. The noun following the preposition even takes the (the sofa), so why is it a cat?

For one thing, there in this case is an indefinite (or “empty”) subject, so an indefinite article (a or an) following it does make sense. It is also one of those sentence patterns that has been around for ages and is unlikely to change. I always make a point of teaching this pattern to my students since it doesn’t follow the normal article rules. It’s one of those exceptions that students should memorize to make their lives easier.

Examples

  • There is a school on the corner of 5th and Main.
  • There is an orange on my desk.
  • There are books on the shelf.

There Is The + Noun

Is there is ever possible with the? While I was writing our new Articles - Beginner lesson, my coworker, Tara, pointed out that the was possible in some of my examples. We then had a long and interesting discussion on whe there is the could be used. (If you can think of any other instances, please add them in the Comments section below!)

If you are answering the question “Where is the (noun)?”, then “There’s the (noun)” is natural. We can also use it for emphasis.

Examples

  • A: Where’s the red pen?
    B: There’s the red pen. (pointing to it)
  • Oh, there are the books I was looking for!
  • There’s the bus! We’ve been waiting forever.

Conclusion

So what should we teach our students? For lower-level students, I’d recommend teaching the There is a + noun pattern. Point out that it is almost always followed by a preposition phrase with the. Teaching There is the + noun to lower-level students might result in confusion and mistakes, so I wouldn’t do that unless a student specifically asks about that case. But for higher-level students, teaching exceptions to rules is helpful and can lead to interesting grammar discussions. I wouldn’t hesitate to bring up There is the + noun to my advanced students.

Practice

Try our NEW Grammar Practice Worksheets lesson on Articles - Beginner! We also have an Articles - Intermediate lesson in that section.

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Comments (7)

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Rohit M.(Teacher)

If we use "THERE IS THE " in subordinate clauses
Does the word THERE still refer to a place?
AS ::--
(This is the time when there is the book.)

It may be wrong sentence in example but please focuse my question

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Tanya Trusler(Author)

Hi Rohit, thanks for your question. "There is a/an" (or no article for plural nouns) would be much more common and natural than "there is the" as a subordinate clause. "There is the" might be possible in this position, but I really can't think of an example that would sound natural. To answer your question, if it were possible, I don't think it would only have to refer to a place. For example, if you could work "there is the answer to our problems" into a subordinate clause naturally, it's not about a location but about figuring something out or finding an answer.

Michael Young(Guest)

The phenomena you are describing is called the 'definiteness effect', part of which blocks the use of 'the' in a definite description in sentences with existential 'there is' sentences. It also does not help that the so-called articles have been branded 'definite' and 'indefinite' when many times they are not

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Petra Nováková(Guest)

We had a discussion about "there is the" today with my pupils. Their textbook says "use A after there is" but we had a sentence "There is a/the main entrance next to the gym." We concluded there must be THE because A would mean there are more main entrances at school, which is a nonsense, the main entrance can be only one, if it is MAIN. So is it correct? There is the main entrance next to the gym.

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Tanya Trusler(Author)

Hi Petra, I'm glad to hear your students were having such a great language discussion with you! Your sentence above is correct, but I would tell your students that it would only sound completely natural if you were all looking at the entrance (and/or pointing to it). E.g., Look! There's the main entrance next to the gym.

If you couldn't see it, then I would rephrase it like this: The main entrance is next to the gym. Or, if you wanted to speak in more general terms, don't use "main": There's an entrance next to the gym. Hope that helps!

Luisa Marti(Guest)

Hi, Tanya. Thanks for this discussion. Just wanted to point out that your "there is a" examples are fundamentally different from your "there is the" examples, in particular, in their syntactic structure. Your "there is a" examples feature existential or dummy 'there'. Dummy 'there' is different from what we can call locational 'there'--it is locational 'there' that appears in your "there is the" examples. You can tell because the latter are compatible with pointing and/or emphasis (e.g., "THERE is the book, I couldn't find it!"), they are statements about the location of something. With existential or dummy 'there', 'there' itself doesn't pick a location (it is odd to put emphasis on that 'there': ?? THERE are books on the shelf). A real example of a "there is the" that is of the same syntactic structure as "there is a" is one brought up by Petra above, "there is the main entrance next to the gym". Another one: "We can't divorce, there is the children to think about".

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Tanya Trusler(Author)

Hi Luisa, thanks for your interesting points! I used locational "there" in my examples in the post because that is the most natural usage of "there" with "the." But I also couldn't really think of examples with "the" where "there" was an empty/dummy subject, so I appreciate your last one: "We can't divorce—there are the children to think about." Thanks for sharing that! As for the gym example, I still think most people would interpret "there" as locational, such as pointing and saying "There's the main entrance next to the gym." However, I can now see that in another context, empty/dummy "there" is possible, such as A: "Where should we hand out the flyers?" B: "Well, there's the main entrance next to the gym. That would be a good spot."

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