13

Are any of the statements below grammatically correct? If any of them is wrong, what is the correct way to state them?

  1. There has been some rapid progress ...
  2. There has been some rapid developments ...

or

  1. There have been some rapid progress ...
  2. There have been some rapid developments ...
1

2 Answers 2

21

Two of your sentences are correct.

There has been some rapid progress.

This is correct, because "progress" is an uncountable noun (ie. nouns that we can't count, so don't have different plural forms); therefore, it can only take a singular verb.

There have been some rapid developments.

This is correct, because "developments" is in the plural form; therefore, it needs a verb in the plural.

1
  • Very helpful, thanks! Commented Jan 31, 2020 at 12:25
-1

It should be "have been" since it has the word "SOME" meaning it is plural. We do not use has for plural nouns.

2
  • Welcome to ELL! Sorry, this is simply not correct. The other answer is.
    – Glorfindel
    Commented Aug 3, 2016 at 5:28
  • The 'some' doesn't represent a quantity as much as something that means 'less than whole'. 'I had some cake' doesn't mean I had multiple pieces of cake. It could mean I only had a part of a single piece. To help, remove the word 'some' and see what comes next. In the first example, 'rapid progress' is a unit entity of 'progress', thus singular so you use 'has'. In contrast 'developments' is plural, so it gets the 'have' treatment. Commented Nov 5, 2017 at 14:21

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .