本文译自英国剑桥大学出版社杂志English Today(ET)一九八七年第二期谈惯用法的专栏文章。作者Darid Crystal现任英国里丁大学语言科学教授,ET顾问编辑,为著名语言学家。文中借答读者问阐述了there’s十名词复数词组用法,并对主谓一致等问题,根据观代语言学的研究成果,作了分析,归纳。原题为;Safety in numb ers?(《单复数保险吗?》),译者改了题名。这篇文章对学习英语口语颇有价值,现在译出,供读原文不无困难的英语学习者参考。 This article is from the Cambridge University Press, UK Today (ET) Darid Crystal is a professor of linguistics at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom and editor of ET Consultants, a renowned linguist. In this paper, readers are asked to elaborate on the use of there’s ten-nouns plural number of phrases, and to analyze the subject-verb relationship according to the research results of linguistics. The original title was; Safety in numb ers ?, the translator changed his title. This essay is quite valuable for learning spoken English and is now available for reference by English learners who have not had difficulty reading the original essay.