Do we use "Is" or "Are" in this sentence?

The subject of the sentence is THERE, which is singular, so the correct verb is IS, because the objects, station, bookshop, airport, are also singular. In order to use ARE there must be a plural somewhere, "there are stations, bookshops, airports, near my house". Note the plural terms following the verb as objects. THERE, STATION, BOOKSHOP, and AIRPORT are all singular terms, so the connecting verb must be singular as well. The problem is both are correct. The person who mentioned a "list" causes the plural ARE to be correct as well even though the subject is singular. Consider this an exception to the singular plural rules because of the object list. What happens if you do not use a list? The sentence would read "There is a bookshop near my house". "There is an airport near my house". "There is a station near my house". I do NOT agree with a list making the verb plural. With ARE in place of IS, it sounds awkward to me, unless you use plural objects as well, the added S on each object, stations, bookshops, airports.

Here is the problem. Or, rather, here are the problems.

Demonstrative adverbs like "here", "there" and "where" can seem to be the subject of a sentence. For example, "Here is the problem." However, these words don't have grammatical number. We need to use the actual subject of the sentence to determine the appropriate number for the verb.

Often, this is easy to do. We merely rearrange the sentence into a more normal word order. On the one hand, "The problem is here." On the other, "The problems are here." Such an arrangement makes subject-verb number agreement perfectly clear.

This rule is simple enough for an intelligent human being. It is far too complicated for an automated expert system, such as a word processor's grammar check, to implement. The MSWord AI is not literally intelligent. It doesn't grasp the semantics. It is incapable of recognizing when the subject is semantically present yet physically absent.

What do I mean by physically absent? Sometimes the subject of the sentence is so hidden, it doesn't appear anywhere in the sentence itself. You might not think there are many examples of this. There are. For example, "there are." In this case, the structure of the sentence really is "Examples are there."

Try explaining that to MSWord.

The shortcut the grammar checker uses is simply to allow the apparent demonstrative adverbial "subject" to agree with both singular and plural verbs. In other words, Word won't mark either "There is" or "There are" as wrong.

I think that that's addressed one of our problems.

We still have the problem of the inclusive list. When it's obvious that that list is the subject of the sentence, even MSWord gets it right. "A station, a bookshop and an airport are there." All members in the group taken together make a compound subject. This subject is obviously plural and obviously agrees with the verb "are".

"A station, a bookshop and an airport are there near my house." Ok, no problem with that.

"There are a station, a bookshop and an airport near my house." Also, no problem with that.

I've just noticed that I could spend days writing about when a list should be treated as a plural and when it should be treated as a singular. Often, like in your example, a list is compound. In that case, you have the right idea. When compounded inclusively (as with "and") it is plural, but when compounded exclusively (as with "or") it is singular. Unless, of course, the individual members happen to be plural, in which case the plurality of the members takes precedence. Let's not forget the case where the membership of the exclusive list has mixed number, and the number of the verb will match the number of the nearest member of the list.

Oh, don't get me started on lists that are collectives rather than compounds. Like I said, I could type for days.

Let's see whether we can get back to the original question

tl;dr

Several things /are/ near my house. These things /are/ a station, a bookshop and an airport.

therefore

There /are/ a station, a bookshop and an airport near my house.

Edit:

Are we still looking for an authoritative website? How does Purdue stand up as an authority? Check my source. Rules 1 and 9 seem to be relevant.

Another edit:

Ok, I feel like I *have* to mention at least one collective list, since you mentioned it first:

But before I do, let me note this:

"And" is not limited to joining separate clauses. We use "and" not only for compound sentences but also for compound subjects, compound predicates, compound prepositional phrases, and so on.

Having said that, I will now say:

One and one is an addition problem. One and one is two.

In the examples above, even though "one and one" is a list combined with "and", it's not a compound subject. It's a collective subject. It's singular. This is why I can't say that every list using "and" is plural.

I mention this to further support my point that MSWord's grammar check is bound to make mistakes. It's a computer program, a set of rules and operations that can react to patterns and make decisions, but cannot understand.

A person has to understand what, for example, "one and two" mean, in general and in a specific context, to tell the difference between:

"One and two are whole numbers."

"One and two is a math problem."

So, the fact that MSWord fails to mark one of your original sentences as incorrect is hardly surpising at all. It was bound to miss marking an error eventually.

Your colleague is wrong. Use "are" as in: There are a station, a bookshop, and an airport near my house. "There" is existential in the usage you have described. The rule for the existential "there" is that the verb, to be, must agree with the noun quantity that follows, i.e. There is a unicorn flying around my head. There are unicorns stomping on my corpse.

P.S. An easy way to figure this out is to remove "there" from the sentence and switch the verb with the noun(s). i.e. A station, a bookshop, and an airport is near my house. That sounds wrong. But if you substitute "are" for "is," you have: A station, a bookshop, and an airport are near my house. Now that sounds right.

ARE

What you have is called an 'expletive construction'. In these, a dummy subject (it, there, here, etc.) is used, followed by the verb, followed by the true subject. The subject of the sentence is 'a station, a bookshop, and an airport'. That is most definitely plural, and requires a plural verb - are.

The answer is "is".

A station is near my house

A bookshop is near my house

The word "and" divides into two sentences

Unless you're talking more than 1 station/bookshop

The stations are near my house

The bookshops are near my house

The stations and bookshops are near my house

Let go back to your sentence

A station and a bookshop is near my house

There are two sentences

The "and" separates the two sentences

A station is near my house

A bookshop is near my house

Put them together

A station is near my house and a bookshop is near my house

Correctly rewrite is

A station and a bookshop is near my house

"is" is correct because you're talking about 1 station n 1 bookshop

Unless you use stations and bookshops

The stations and bookshops are my house

The key word in your sentence is "a"

A bookshop, a zoo, a restaurant, and a bar "is" near my house

Probably "is" because there is only one station. If there were more stations, it would make more sense. "There are 2 stations, a bookshop and an airport near my house." But with one station it doesn't make sense. It's like saying "there are a bottle, a pencil and a calculator on my desk." It doesn't flow that way. But I could be wrong.

I would say either could be used. I would use the plural verb. There are two brothers in the house. There is (?) two brothers in the house.

But look at my source, the third usage "there (noun)", which lists an example that uses is with a list of two.

I'm almost positive are is for plural. I know theres more than one thing, but its listing 1 thing at a time.

So it would be

There is station, a bookshop and an airport near my house.

The answer is "is", because the subject is singular not plural. It doesn't matter if there is a list of multiple subjects because if you seperate them into different sentences then it will obviously make sense that "is" would be the correct verb.

There is a station, bookshop and airport near my house or A station, bookshop and airport are near my house