plural forms - There's vs There are

For example:

There's two options here

or

There are two options here

I hear a lot of people say the first line (or something similar), but isn't that incorrect? Isn't it plural and therefore you should use "there are"?

Answer

Here's an edited version of a post I did for ELU on a similar question (which got closed):

The existential construction takes there as a subject. There has no meaning, and often the verb takes its agreement from the complement of the verb BE. So if the Noun Phrase after BE is plural, the verb will usually be in a plural form. If the Noun Phrase is singular it will usually be singular:

• There is an antelope over there.


• There are some antelopes over there.

Notice, however, that in the examples above, the subject and the verb BE are not contracted. In normal speech these will nearly always be contracted. We will use there's instead of there is. It is also quite common nowadays to see them contracted in writing, normally in informal texts, although you can find instances in prestigious newspapers like the Times, for example.

Now when the subject there and BE are contracted like this, the verb doesn't need to agree in any way with the following Noun Phrase. Therefore with regard to the Original Poster's example, if they had said:

*There is two options here.

... this sentence would be regarded as ungrammatical by most, if not all speakers. However because they did contract there and BE, it is grammatical:

There's two options here.

This makes this sentence similar to a famous lyric from one of John Lennon's songs:

Imagine there's no countries.

Or usages such as:

There's times when I've wanted to box his ears

Having said this, despite the fact that this is a well documented aspect of the grammar, some prescriptivists are bound to take offense at this. They will insist that it's ungrammatical to use a plural noun after there's. This will be despite the fact that they quite subconsciously actually use plural nouns after there's themselves quite frequently. They will appear about five minutes after I post this answer. They do make life fun though!

There are some other special situations where we might use there is with a plural noun phrase, even though it is not contracted. For example How many people live in your house? Well, there is me, my grandad, my mum and my aunt. If you'd like to read about these exceptions, there's some good posts here!.