, is there?

Question tags are short phrases added at the end of a statement to transform it into a question or to seek confirmation or agreement from the listener.

There are no prizes for telling us what the problems are, are there?

TED

The following example show that native speakers do not always use the correct form of ‘BE’:

Yeahthere’s only two options here, isn’t there?

TED

There are only two options here, aren’t there?

 


In the English Grammar Profile, C1 point 33 in QUESTIONS/tags is defined as:

affirmative and negative forms of question tags with ‘there’ + ‘be’


Here’s an iWeb corpus search for:

, _VB there ?

1 , IS THERE? 1657
2 , ARE THERE? 174
3 , WAS THERE? 118

, _VB _XX there ?

1 , ISN’T THERE? 585
2 , AREN’T THERE? 140
3 , WASN’T THERE? 77


iWeb won’t allow checking the actual results, so we move to COCA:

3 2019 TV Les Misérables

And she’s your granddaughter?

Not much of a family resemblance, is there?

Well, she takes after her mother’s side.

 

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