1. How many dragon heads are on the wall?
2. How many dragon heads are there on the wall?
3. There are five dragon heads on the wall.
4. There are the five dragon heads on the wall.
5. Five dragon heads are on the wall.
6. The five dragon heads are on the wall.
[Which question is correct? Can we use both? Then which one is commonly used? What about the pattern 'There + be..."? Is it ungrammatical if we use 'the' as in #4? What about #5 and #6 as well?]
Yes, either 1 or 2 can be used. Q1 is slightly better because "there" in Q2 is not really needed.
The difference between 3 and 4 and between 5 and 6 is what "the" implies.
3 and 5 mean there are lots of different dragon heads available, and five of them are on the wall.
4 and 6 mean there are only five dragon heads, and all are on the wall.
Both question 1 and question 2 are correct and can be used interchangeably. However, question 2 is more commonly used in everyday language.
The pattern "There + be..." is a grammatically correct way to express the existence or presence of something. It is often used to introduce or highlight an object or objects. In this case, both sentence 3 and sentence 5 use the pattern "There + be..." correctly to state that there are five dragon heads on the wall.
Sentence 4 ("There are the five dragon heads on the wall") is grammatically incorrect. When using the pattern "There + be...", we do not typically use the definite article "the" before the noun "five dragon heads" as it is redundant.
Sentence 6 ("The five dragon heads are on the wall") is grammatically correct, but it does not follow the specific pattern "There + be...". Instead, it simply states that the five dragon heads are on the wall without using the introductory phrase "There are."