Reiko's Guestbook question of December 16, 2001:

..I have a question as usual.

'There is a cat called Maria in my house.'

Is this sentence incorrect?

Or sounds unnatural?

Should we say ' We have a cat called Maria.'?

Both of these sentences are natural and grammatical. As with any given pair of different structures, however, these is a slight difference in connotation.

In the first sentence, it is not perfectly clear who owns the cat (if anyone can be said to own a cat!), but it seems that the cat may not be the speaker's. We would need further clarification because of the vagueness of this sentence. (Whose cat is it? If it's not your cat, why does it live in your house?)

Using "we have" in the second sentence seems to make it clear that the speaker's family owns a cat named Maria.