I am curious about the function and category of "come to life" in

@Man_From_India Is it not a past-participial clause functioning as post-head modifier?

What might be deceiving me is the first thing I thought of when I read your sentence, and that is evil personified. What I don't like in your particular example is come's being an intransitive verb. So I could be wrong. I'm not very imaginative (I had to google a list of intransitive verbs) but the only similar-looking example I could think of is a prank gone wrong.

Meh, it's that, mos def. (: (Patiently waiting for snailie to steamroller my half-assed attempts.)

Janky attempts.

:-)

gets laughed at all the way down from India

@Man_From_India What do you think?

@userr2684291 not really :) actually I too have no idea. My initial thought was it seems like an object oriented predicative complement. But I can't backup my thought because I can't think of any VP functioning like this. So it has to be something else.

There is another possibility that "come to life" is part of an NP and is a post-modifier.

But problem is in that case the meaning has to be something like this "a fairyland which has come to life". I am doubtful if such perfective structure is admissible in such construction. I have to read when I am back home.

Yep. That's why the intransitiveness bothers me too. Usually you'd have some sort of passive meaning/expansion.

I don't have time to read about these, however. Good luck.

@Man_From_India I would paraphrase it as “a fairyland made real”. Something that “has come to life” is something that has awoken after being dormant. Suddenly, the machine came to life, whirring and chattering. It’s tricky.

@ColleenV yup. But the sentence structure is what causes confusion :(

@Man_From_India I don’t know enough about grammar to make even a guess about the structure of the sentence. My point was that “fairytale come to life” isn’t really the same as “fairytale which has come to life”. It’s more like “manifested fairytale “. I’m not sure whether the semantics have any effect on how you would analyze it though.

FWIW, I think it may. I perceive it the same way, as if come were "applied" indeed – the expression strikes me as slightly old-fashioned in that manner.

Everything boils down to some variety of meaning when it comes to language analysis.

I remember a story about a guy who participated in a French(?) Scrabble competition or something while he himself wasn't a native (or proficient) speaker of French; he essentially learned all the words in their dictionary. He won, of course. I don't think the same can be done with grammar unless you have, as AI people call it, a model of the world. So it depends on both meaning (of individual words as well as sentences) and some other knowledge.

@skullpetrol Tha's only in the mo'nin'!

(Your avatar.)

Alright, enough. 40 more pages to go! Haha-ha..ahh. ):