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I wonder if "1" is correct grammatically.If so, I wonder if "2" is correct.1. It was like a dream come true.2.  It was like a dream comes/came true.

Philip · Accepted Answer

1 is correct: (come) is the past participle used as an adjective.

2 is not correct, either way...they are verb tenses.

Cool Breeze · Answer

Wowenglish wonder if "1" is correct grammatically.
If so, I wonder if "2" is correct.

1. It was like a dream come true.

It is correct because it is commonly used. It is one of those expressions that have been used so long that they have become accepted usage even though they are ungrammatical. Come is an intransitive verb and such verbs are not normally used in structures like this. If we replace the verb come with another intransitive verb, the sentence may not sound so good:

It was a dream happened many times before.
It was a dream arrived none too soon.

This is an excellent example of what is difficult about English: lack of logic and consistency.

CB

BillJ · Answer

Cool Breeze
Wowenglish wonder if "1" is correct grammatically.

If so, I wonder if "2" is correct.

1. It was like a dream come true.

It is correct because it is commonly used. It is one of those expressions that have been used so long that they have become accepted usage even though they are ungrammatical. Come is an intransitive verb and such verbs are not normally used in structures like this. If we replace the verb come with another intransitive verb, the sentence may not sound so good:

This is an excellent example of what is difficult about English: lack of logic and consistency.

CB

But it's not ungrammatical!

It may be an idiom, but it's still grammatical because it doesn't break any syntactic rules.

'It was like a dream come true' is an example of a reduced relative clause. In full it would be 'It was like a dream that had come true'. Contrary to what you say, 'come' is not being used here as an intransitive verb, but as a nonfinite verb (in this case the past participle form of 'come').

A reduced relative clause typically omits the relative pronoun and the verb becomes nonfinite, and that's exactly what we have here - a good old-fashioned English reduced relative clause, no less.

BillJ

Cool Breeze · Answer

BillJIt may be an idiom, but it's still grammatical because it doesn't break any syntactic rules.

'It was like a dream come true' is an example of a reduced relative clause. In full it would be 'It was like a dream that had come true'. Contrary to what you say, 'come' is not being used here as an intransitive verb, but as a nonfinite verb (in this case the past participle form of 'come').

A reduced relative clause typically omits the relative pronoun and the verb becomes nonfinite, and that's exactly what we have here - a good old-fashioned English reduced relative clause, no less.

Yes, maybe I was in too much of a rush when I called it ungrammatical. It is, however, unusual and exceptional. In my grammatical terminology come in the sentence is intransitive even if it is nonfinite as well. That is an irrelevant difference in our terminologies, though.

Contrary to what you say, a reduced relative clause rarely omits the relative pronoun when the relative pronoun is the subject of the relative clause, and that is what makes this particular sentence exceptional or idiomatic or whatever adjective one considers best to describe it.

We can say:
It was like a dream come true. = It was like a dream that had come true.

However, these similar sentences with come and a relative pronoun as the subject of a relative clause may not sound so acceptable:
There were two people come earlier. = There were two people that/who had come earlier.
I saw a car come from Paris. = I saw a car that had come from Paris.

This is what I meant when I said English lacks logic. For a native speaker these things come naturally but a foreign student of English has a hard time trying to learn all the exceptions. English has the simplest verb forms of the languages I have acquainted myself with, but the lack of logic in their usage is a big hindrance to learning.

All the exceptions and idioms do add to the fascination of English, of course!

CB

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