Hi, I’m not sure which one is correct? Or both acceptable? I have searched for such sentences online, but still don’t know which on eis better, because it seems both of the two are used very ofter.
Example: With the vast knowledge of modern science, there seem/ or seems to be few mysteries left for humans to explore.
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Hello, Zheng-- and welcome to English-test.net.
Grammatically, I would choose ‘seem’, just as in:
There is a mystery
There are few mysteries.
I am not surprised however, that on-line reveals many ‘seems’ here; I would guess that it results at least partially from the similar usage of ‘be’, where “There’s” is easier to articulate than “There’re”.
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Hi there,
And welcome to english-test! In your example it should read ‘there seem to be few mysteries’ because of noun-verb concord.
But how about…
With the vast knowledge of modern science, it seems there are few mysteries left for humans to explore.
‘it seems’ - concord of subject and verb in number
‘there seem to be mysteries’ - existential noun phrase
Thank you very much.
Actually, the original sentence is just as you wrote,“With the vast knowledge of modern science, it seems there are few mysteries left for humans to explore.” But one of my colleagues wanted to rewrite the sentence, and that’s why and where this problem arose. In most cases, it’s hard for us foreigners to tell what kind of expression is so-called standard English. So, it does help a lot by viewing your relpies to different topics. Thanks again.
It also hard for many, many native speakers to do so.
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Most native speakers are never asked to consider the question. They are plumbers, salesmen, or nurses.
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