Why does "no problems" go with plural verb? [closed]

Solution 1:

It is a general rule in English that a singular verb agrees with a singular subject.
Not just any noun, but only its subject noun. Let's get the rule right before we start.

In the first sentence, the subject NP no problems is plural because it has a plural suffix, and not because of what it means. No problems doesn't mean plural, after all; it's zero, not more than one. In addition, There-Insertion has occurred, moving the plural subject NP to the end of the sentence, and inserting a dummy subject there before the verb. The verb continues to agree with the moved subject, which is still plural.

In the second case, two conjoined non-count nouns (say, bread and cheese), or a count and a non-count (say Mrs. Brown and her cooking), they're plural. That's what the and does. They're singular with or, however; and don't ask how agreement works when you disjoin a singular and a plural subject with or.

In the second case, noun compounds (which is what you're describing) do normally have singular first elements. This is a hangover from the rule that adjectives don't inflect for plural; the first noun in a compound isn't an adjective, but it often acts like one. This is the reason why *Shoes Store is ungrammatical, even though almost everybody buys two shoes at a time.

However, words like sports, physics, or maths that look like plural but can be used like mass nouns can also appear first in noun compounds -- both sports clothes and sport clothes are correct and and common, and mean the same thing, .

Finally, one can use prepositional phrases instead of noun compounds. For instance,

• the prices of the laptops (a list, assuming one price per laptop)
• the prices of this laptop (a list assuming several prices for a particular laptop)
• laptop prices (a general survey of the market, for unspecified laptops)
• laptop price (the price that applies to a laptop model of something).

Et cetera. There are a lot of ways to form noun phrases.