How many students are there in the class

How many sudents were in your class?

space cowboy

Senior Member

How many studens were in your class?

How many sudents were there in your class?

Is it necessary to use there in this kind of sentence?

Keith Bradford

Senior Member

No. The use of there as a substitute subject in this sentence is optional, and makes no difference to the meaning.

However there are other contexts where you have no choice. E.g. «What difference is there between tons and tonnes?» In this case, there is obligatory. Somebody cleverer than me may know if there’s an easy rule for this.

Forero

Senior Member

How many studen t s were in your class?

How many s t udents were there in your class?

Is it necessary to use there in this kind of sentence?

It depends on what kind of sentence you want, but both are proper sentences.

There is a difference in meaning, but I find it difficult to describe or explain.

There of course has two possible meanings. One has to do with location: «(right) there in your class».

But what I think you are asking about is existential there. It is hard to find two linguists who will agree on how to analyze it. Some call it an adverb, some call it a stand-in for the «real» subject, and others say it is the real subject.

As you can see, it does come after the verb in a question, like a subject, but the verb is plural when the other «subject» is plural.

It can also come after the other subject:

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
.
[«Annabel Lee» by Edgar Allan Poe]

I think all agree that this kind of there has to do with existence, not location.

In «Students were in your class», the subject is «students», and the predicate tells where they were or what they were members of. And the question «How many students were in your class?» is asking how many people who may be called students were in that place or were members of that group.