grammaticality - That's a lot of ___ vs. those are a lot of ___




  • That's a lot of cars!

  • Those are a lot of cars!



The context is when a someone sees many objects (in this example, cars) and makes the exclamation.


According to this site, lot can handle either singular or plural verbs. I agree with the author who states that that's sounds better, but the post doesn't seem definitive either way.



Are both grammatically correct and do they have the same meaning?




Answer



We can consider "a lot of cars" as a plurality of cars, and use those.


We can consider "a lot of cars" as a singular "lot", and use that.


Synesis or notional agreement is where we use a grammatical number not of what is plainly stated (the plurality of cars) but of what is implied (the single "lot"). The fact that "a lot" contains a singular article (a) adds to this implication.


A significant thing here is that we are focusing upon the concept of lot as important in itself. Because this is what we are remarking upon, we're more inclined to consider a lot than cars when matching the number.


Conversely:



A lot of cars have cruise-control.


*A lot of cars has cruise-control.



Here we're focusing more upon something to do with the cars themselves. For this reason the plural form sounds clearly correct, while the singular sounds wrong.



A lot of sweets is an okay present if you can't think of anything else.


*A lot of sweets are an okay present if you can't think of anything else.


*A lot of sweets are okay presents if you can't think of anything else.



Here we're focused again upon the singular "lot" of sweets, and further making of it a single present, and singular agreement works while plural does not.


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