Timeline for Why is this sentence from The Great Gatsby grammatical?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 5, 2023 at 22:05 | comment | added | Daron | @DarthPseudonym A more modern example "There is a man at the door, come to talk about Jesus." Well, that's a different "to" too. | |
| Mar 5, 2023 at 16:51 | comment | added | Darth Pseudonym | @daron "Were come" is different from "come" without a helper verb, but both of them are nonstandard constructions as far as my ear is concerned. Where "they were come to the doors" sounds intentionally archaic, "a nightingale come over on [a ship]" sounds colloquial or slangy. I'm not sure I can identify exactly why, but that's how it hits me. | |
| Mar 5, 2023 at 16:11 | answer | added | Michael Hardy | timeline score: 1 | |
| Mar 5, 2023 at 15:11 | comment | added | Hagen von Eitzen | That sentence copied from the Great Gatsby involves a relative clause having no relative pronoun, so there is no grammar gone wrong. | |
| Mar 5, 2023 at 12:46 | comment | added | Daron | "They were come to the doors of Isengard." | |
| Mar 4, 2023 at 23:02 | comment | added | shadowtalker | +1 @DarthPseudonym, I also read this as a century-old ungrammatical colloquialism. | |
| Mar 4, 2023 at 22:00 | comment | added | Darth Pseudonym | As another native US speaker, this is comprehensible but definitely not normal phrasing. (I would have said "that came over".) To me it sounds like slang I'm not familiar with, which would be appropriate for a slang phrase from a century ago. | |
| Mar 4, 2023 at 18:14 | comment | added | Hollis Williams | I'm from the UK and this sentence doesn't sound unusual to me, it just sounds slightly colloquial. | |
| S Mar 4, 2023 at 1:14 | history | suggested | benrg |
[grammar] -> [grammaticality]
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| Mar 4, 2023 at 0:47 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Mar 4, 2023 at 1:14 | |||||
| Mar 3, 2023 at 21:24 | comment | added | Cristobol Polychronopolis | As a native US speaker, it doesn't sound unusual to me, but I'm over 60 and read a lot, so I might be biased on the subject of obsolescence. | |
| Mar 3, 2023 at 18:56 | comment | added | B. Goddard | Older English is like German. There are two past perfect tense constructions. While we use "has come" today, we used to say "is come". Verbs of motion tended to take "is" rather than "has". | |
| Mar 3, 2023 at 13:57 | comment | added | David42 | I believe "come" is being used as a participle as in "Joy to the world, the Lord is come!" | |
| Mar 3, 2023 at 1:39 | comment | added | davolfman | And it's still an understandable construct in some cases: "I think he's a tourist fresh off the plane." Although I think we'd usually put a comma before fresh. | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 23:45 | comment | added | Davislor | That would be a very unusual way to phrase it in American English today. Remember, The Great Gatsby is nearly a century old. | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 19:03 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Mar 2, 2023 at 12:46 | answer | added | Mari-Lou A | timeline score: 26 | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 11:46 | answer | added | Anton | timeline score: 11 | |
| Mar 2, 2023 at 11:34 | history | edited | Andrew Leach♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 10 characters in body; edited tags
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| Mar 2, 2023 at 11:01 | history | asked | rain soupreme | CC BY-SA 4.0 |