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I have learned the following sentence is grammatically correct because it is possible to omit the nominative relative pronoun in a sentence like "there is ...". I'm not sure if it is natural or not in real, however. I would like to ask three questions about it.

There's somebody wants to see you.

Q1. Is the sentence natural? Why?

Q2. Does the inclusion of the relative "who" make a difference in nuance? If so, what is the difference?

Q3. Is it possible to use "there is" instead of the contraction form, "there's" in the sentence? Why?

Beluga
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    You could either say "somebody wants to see you" or "there is/there's (no difference) somebody who wants to see you". The option you provided is not correct or idiomatic (in any dialect I've heard) – Esther Jun 14 '22 at 15:46
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    Consensus seems to be that it's mainly dialectal or informal https://forum.thefreedictionary.com/postst199349_There-s-somebody--who--wants-you-on-the-phone-.aspx https://www.usingenglish.com/forum/threads/theres-somebody-wants-to-see-you.123983/ I can find similar examples from London c. 1950s and New York State c. 1900. I can't find anything authoritative though. – Stuart F Jun 14 '22 at 16:03
  • It's not correct and yet is still acceptable in New York. It implies you will want to meet. Were the gatekeeper less charmed by that somebody, you'd hear Guy to see ya. You don't have time, do ya? – Yosef Baskin Jun 14 '22 at 16:13
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    @Esther: Where are you based? It's perfectly natural in relaxed British conversational contexts to omit the relativiser (who* or that)* in the cited context. And I'm far from convinced any professional linguists would say that it's "ungrammatical" to do so, even if some pedantic grammarians might think there's something wrong with it. So far as I'm concerned, the only grammatical "rule" involved here is the one saying [that] such relativisers (especially, *that) are always* "optional, discardable". – FumbleFingers Jun 14 '22 at 16:40
  • @FumbleFingers hmm, maybe I was overly harsh. It sounds very wrong to me, but I can't say I've never heard it or can't imagine someone saying it. – Esther Jun 14 '22 at 16:42
  • I have heard "There's someone what wants to see you" in such as Peaky Blinders...a street usage which is usually conveyed in a menacing tone. – Cascabel_StandWithUkraine_ Jun 14 '22 at 17:04
  • @Cascabel_StandWithUkraine_ Yes, and that use of what is common in Dickens. it's basically Cockney. – Lambie Jun 14 '22 at 18:59
  • @FumbleFingers I think there's quite a few UK varieties where you could always omit the subject. However, for many there's a cline of acceptability according to other factors. There's something about the existential construction that makes OP's example fine in my variety. But, in contrast, I met a woman broke her leg doesn't work in my variety at all. – Araucaria - Him Jun 14 '22 at 20:30
  • As many have said, it has a missing "who". But that missing "who" could equally be a missing "that". – abligh Jun 15 '22 at 05:43
  • @Araucaria-Nothereanymore.: You're quite right. I overstated my case - I absolutely agree your woman broke her leg example isn't idiomatic for most people, but I wouldn't know how to formally identify those contexts where it seems more "necessary" to include the relativiser. Note that several written instances of the sequence {do} you know anyone needs* {something I want to sell}* match this context. But that's a pretty "dialectal, uneducated" usage, for sure. – FumbleFingers Jun 15 '22 at 10:51
  • @FumbleFingers Intuitively, it seems like it’s more acceptable when the relative clause modifies one of the compound determiners: any/some/no + one/body/thing/place/where. – Araucaria - Him Jun 15 '22 at 12:05
  • @Araucaria-Nothereanymore.: Also less acceptable (totally unacceptable?) where the relative clause modifies the subject of an utterance. A guy needed a light took my matches sounds pretty dire to me, but I gave my matches to a guy needed a light doesn't sound too bad (it looks worse than it sounds, though! :) – FumbleFingers Jun 15 '22 at 12:17
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    @FumbleFingers Yes, I think you’re right. And there’s definitely a cline of acceptability there. – Araucaria - Him Jun 15 '22 at 12:40
  • Another variation that I've seen (not heard) but don't know enough about to turn into an answer: There's somebody as wants to see you. – Bobson Jun 15 '22 at 20:54
  • @FumbleFingers It's these comments here I was angling at :) – Araucaria - Him Jul 19 '22 at 14:50
  • @Araucaria-Nothereanymore: Looking again at your example here (many years later), I think the word *looking* is crucial. In a conversational context, I wouldn't notice anything remotely unusual about discarding the [*optional*, imho] relativiser *who* in I met a woman broke her leg. It's only in the more formal *written* context that I'd normally notice any "syntactic looseness" there. – FumbleFingers Jul 19 '22 at 15:05

6 Answers6

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This isn’t correct in written English and I believe it’d be considered a mistake here on the West Coast of the United States, although it shouldn’t be a big deal to misspeak one word in a sentence, occasionally. I’m used to filling in a missing word due to background noise or a poor telephone connection.

The following all sound more natural to me:

  • There’s somebody here to see you
  • There’s somebody here who wants to see you
  • There’s somebody here that wants to see you

There is would also be possible, but to my ear, makes the register of the sentence clash. It starts out too formally to get that casual about the relative pronoun later on.

I believe it’s more common in some other dialects, but I’ll let people from those places speak to that..

Davislor
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  • Another possibility is just "Somebody wants to see you". Grammatically, the most straightforward. May need a verbal prefix like "Er" or a visual gesture, to avoid seeming abrupt. – nigel222 Jun 15 '22 at 08:48
  • @nigel222 Come to think of it, “Nigel, somebody’s here to see you!” would work well too, or “Somebody here to see you!” in casual speech. – Davislor Jun 15 '22 at 21:08
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It doesn't look as though anyone has addressed your third question yet, so I'll give it a shot.

Omitting the relative pronoun "who" would be unusual in formal speech. (As you can see from other answers and comments, many people consider it incorrect.) Therefore, this sentence is likely to be interpreted as casual / slang / colloquial. For that reason, the contracted form "there's" works well here. However, writing out "there is" would certainly be grammatical and might even be useful in some contexts (for example, if you wanted to place stress on "is").

MarcInManhattan
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According to this reference "who" should not be omitted in this sentence.

(PristineWord) Look at this sentence.

  • Correct The waiter who served us yesterday was rude.

The subject of the relative clause is who (the waiter), so we cannot leave out the relative pronoun. However, we can omit it in another way (see step 2).

  • incorrect The waiter served us yesterday was rude.

2 When the relative pronoun is the subject, we can omit that, who, or which in two basic ways:

If that, who, or which is followed by the verb "be" (in any form), both elements can be omitted.

  • Correct The keys that are on the table are mine.

  • Correct The keys on the table are mine.

If that, who, or which is followed by a verb, both elements (pronoun and verb) can be changed into "-ing" form of the verb.

  • Correct People who follow healthy diets tend to live longer.

  • Correct People following healthy diets tend to live longer.

You could say this.

  • There is somebody wanting to see you.

In formal writing, always use "there is".

LPH
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    That looks like a resource for English learners, which reduce everything to "standard English" and never cover dialectical forms (which the example seems to be, judging from the comments). – Laurel Jun 14 '22 at 18:12
  • @Laurel I conceive it rather as aimed at users of English—I am myself one still in need to resort to rules and compendiums of usage—, not desirous to allow their speech to be identified to any particular dialect nor to a strictly informal type of English, but instead, concerned with preserving a standard not likely to deviate much from what is generally accepted. – LPH Jun 14 '22 at 18:37
  • @Lambie 1/ Yes, "in need of resorting to" : idiomatic now . 2/ No, "not willing to" (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=not+willing+to+allow&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cnot%20willing%20to%20allow%3B%2Cc0) 3/ Yes, "with" is idiomatic, "to" is not, apparently. 4/ No, I mean "preserve", not "follow" (people concerned with preserving a standard for themselves and not spreading any standards). Thank you very much for your time and what is pertinent in your editing. – LPH Jun 14 '22 at 19:32
  • "There is somebody wanting to see you" is correct in Indian English, but sounds very strange to British English speakers (and I've never heard that form in American English either). – Jack Aidley Jun 15 '22 at 09:14
  • @JackAidley It seems that "someone wanting to see you" is quite acceptable; see for yourself : https://www.google.com/search?q=%22someone%20wanting%20to%20see%20you%22&tbm=bks&lr=lang_en . Yet, if you replaced "somebody" by "someone" the construction would not be valid any more. That seems rather strange to me. What do you think? – LPH Jun 15 '22 at 10:08
  • "There is somebody waiting to see you" is perfectly natural BrE, but not so much "There is somebody wanting to see you". It's just that the continuous participle is more typically noticed as "Indian English" with verbs reflecting mental states (such as I'm loving this song! instead of "mainstream" I love this song!). – FumbleFingers Jun 15 '22 at 12:22
  • I'd agree with the pronouncement: 'incorrect: The waiter served us yesterday was rude. However, There's somebody wants to see you sounds like the conversational deletion Lee Van Cleef or Edward G. Robinson would use. I'd only use it in mimicry, though I expect there are areas of the US where it would not trigger the 'Ham!' impression I doubtless usually invoke. I'd not recommend its use in any formal communication. // I feel the preposing of existential 'There's' makes the difference here; 'There is' perhaps mixes registers incongruously. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 15 '22 at 13:53
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In British English, we would normally include the 'who', as in:

There's somebody who wants to see you

You would still be easily understood if it were omitted. I think it would depend on the individual (British) listener whether it made the sentence sound 'odd' to them. To my ear "There's somebody wants to see you" would sound American.

Chris Hatton
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    And to an American ear like mine, "There's somebody wants to see you" would sound like something out of a TV show set in rural England. – Spencer Jun 15 '22 at 14:11
  • @Spencer - To my N BrE [metropolitan] ear it sounds absolutely fine as colloquial speech. Sure, there's a missing word, but it's still a perfectly natural omission. – Tetsujin Jun 15 '22 at 17:54
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  • There's somebody wants to see you.

is perfectly normal spoken English. One might add /t/ at the end of somebody to show a deleted that, or one might use an extra vowel there to show a deleted who. Or one might make an inaudible tongue gesture in either direction, and feel satisfied they'd pronounced the requisite pronoun.

Of course, English writing doesn't allow us the benefit of merely transcribing the language as it's spoken. Unless we dare the slings and arrows of outrageous peeving, we must pretend that we talk different. How you want to pretend is up to you.

John Lawler
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    Right-o. And for me, there are basically two grammar codes, one spoken and another written. – Lambie Jun 14 '22 at 18:58
  • Shouldn't we, rather than talk of naturally spoken English, refer to slurred speech, which, if common enough in certain contexts but can't still be qualified as natural? Hurried speech, for instance, is never what one would call quite natural. – LPH Jun 14 '22 at 19:41
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    One might add--to deter peevers who think we should speak English like people did in Shakespeare's day--that this used to be the most frequent way of reducing relative clauses altogether (to omit the that/which/who when it was the subject) in Shakespeare's day. And he did it all the time. In contrast, omitting the relative word when it represented a missing object, as is normal nowadays, was relatively rare. [See here, for example.] – Araucaria - Him Jun 14 '22 at 20:11
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    @LPH No, we shouldn't speak of slurred speech, unless we're speaking of the way drunk people talk. That's real slurring. Contracting meaningless words like auxiliaries is just normal speech. It's just that it doesn't get represented in printed materials, which is due to printers and editors, not to any supposed "natural" character. It's the way it's done because it's the way it's done, and thats it. – John Lawler Jun 14 '22 at 22:33
  • I am not speaking about "clean" omissions, which are well established in informal speech and writing, and "slurred" is as you mention, not exact, I can see that now. However, hurried speech is more like what you are describing, and it seems this type of elocution should not be determining, but merely tolerated occasionally. – LPH Jun 14 '22 at 23:07
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    There is no standard speed for speech. Everybody has their own set of rates, and they use them differently in different contexts. We all know people that talk slow and we all know people that talk fast. It's no use pretending there is a proper form of speech that emerges at one velocity and no faster or slower. – John Lawler Jun 14 '22 at 23:21
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    "There's somebody wants to see you is perfectly normal spoken English". Which "spoken English" are we talking about? Where? I have absolutely never heard this in my entire existence. – jeancallisti Jun 15 '22 at 07:57
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    I have also never heard any native English say "there's somebody wants to see you". People say "Somebody wants to see you" or "There's somebody here to see you". It's the kind of mistake I'd expect from a semi-fluent non-native speaker. – Jack Aidley Jun 15 '22 at 09:12
  • "is perfectly normal spoken English" no it's not. – eps Jun 15 '22 at 17:40
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    Which "spoken English" are we talking about? This once again is the key point. Just because someone in California has never heard it doesn't mean that a Brit wouldn't have met it a hundred times. – Tetsujin Jun 15 '22 at 17:59
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I'm not an English major or teacher of any kind, but it was my strongest subject, and the statement you're asking about sounds absolutely wrong. That doesn't mean it's grammatically incorrect, but I would be shocked if it wasn't. The "there's" should be dropped from the statement altogether as it's unnecessary, gratuitous, and, as I mentioned, sounds 100% grammatically incorrect.

Then again, we added "ain't" as a contraction to the dictionary, sooo... what do I know? LOL I think Pink Floyd said it best...

"We don't need no education!"

TrexxæByte
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