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!.
This is a compound sentence. Try breaking it apart.
What do residential areas in a big city look like? Who lives there?
"Who live there?" would sound wrong, no? While "who" might refer to many people, it is treated as singular in an interrogative where the verb acting on the interrogative pronoun isn't a form of "to be".
- Who lives there?
- Who does that?
- Who eats this kind of food?
If that verb is a form of "to be", then the verb agrees with the number of the predicate.
- Who are the people that live there?
- Who are the people that do that?
- Who are the people that eat this kind of food?
Best Answer
This is correct.
There's is a contraction and can mean there is, there has or there are. In this case, it stands for there are. As Snailplane mentions, the there are case has become standard in modern informal English, despite the fact that apostrophe-s isn't a sensible contraction for are. It's inappropriate in formal English to use there's to mean there are, but the same applies to all contractions as a general rule, because contractions are informal.
Why has this happened? Because there's is so ubiquitous and easy to say that this is now how a broad swath of native English speakers naturally talk. And we write the way we talk, so the new meaning of there's is valid in written English as well. Most dictionaries and other English references have not caught up with the new usage, so you won't find an entry in them explaining the there are case. Such materials are (in the case of English) by definition reactive; they don't dictate rules and meanings, they document them, and that takes time and effort.
What happens when we un-contract there's? Let's set aside the there has case, since it's not relevant to the question.
Normally, we conjugate the verb based on the subject. But, there is a dummy subject and can be either singular or plural, so for there is X, we must examine X to determine the plurality of is, as if it were the subject of the sentence. If X is a lone noun, the decision is easy. Use is for singular nouns and are for plural ones.
With lists, we decide how to conjugate based on the list's construction. For a conjunctive list (formed with and), then the correct conjugation is are. For a disjunctive list (formed with or), then the verb is pluralized based on the adjacent list item. For example, there are two small ones or one big one and there is one big one or two small ones. Aside from the exception in the case of or groups, whether the items are plural doesn't matter. A list of singular nouns grouped with and always calls for a plural verb.
These are the standard rules for plural conjugation, and they're unaffected by the new wrinkle in the meaning of there's. There are X [singular] or Y, there are [singular noun], there is A and B, and there is [plural noun] are all ungrammatical.
So, for our example, removing the apostrophe-s yields this:
Let's examine the proffered amended version.
Breaking up the statement into a list of the form there's X, there's Y, and there's Z is valid, though more verbose. But what about each independent clause?
This version is correct, if a little bit awkward sounding, but it still uses there's in the same way as the original. Which is, of course, also correct.