grammatical number - There is/are one or several apple/~s?


To be clear, among



There is one or several apple.


There are one or several apple.


There is one or several apples.


There are one or several apples.



which is correct?



My guess:


enter image description here


Because of the shortest distance rule 1, apples is correct as it is near several.


Though there seems to be near one, the actually object is apples, and thus are should be used.


Thus



There are one or several apples.



is correct.


To make things clearer,



There are one or several apples and a table.



illustrates the long connection between there and apples better.


1 Sorry, I do not know its English name. I just translate it from my language back.



By the way, I do not want to emphasize at least one.



Answer



That is not a smooth phrase but of the choices "There are one or several apples" would be most common. See this and this for examples.


"There is at least one apple" would be better.


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