I've certainly seen 'turned up dead'.

See, for me, "come up lame" is a perfectly accurate visual descriptor: I immediately think of, say, a basball player, running for first base and pulling his hamstring. He stumbles, then gets up, slow and painful, and he's limping; the trainer runs out, the player is standing, he limps or hops off the field. He did, quite literally, "come up lame".

But for me, "turns up" and "missing" are opposites. If I read that something has turned up, I immediately think, aha, it was found. It was gone; now it's not.

So I can't parse it with "missing."

edit:

I've certainly seen 'turned up dead'

As in, was found dead. That one makes perfect sense to me. It's just used with "missing" that bugs me.

I don't think I've heard come up lame before, either--at least, I haven't noticed it.

I always parsed it as the fact turned up, not the person. So it'd never have occurred to me as counterintuitive.

I think you're right, ita. "Turned up" may be an abbreviation of "turned out to be," i.e. a phrase marking the beginning of being in the adjectival state (missing, lame, dead) rather than meaning the verb's literal content.

Like, "He was missing on May 10" doesn't give a sense of the order of events, but "He turned up missing on May 10" tells you he might have been missing before then, but May 10 was the first day anybody noticed.

Huh. ita, if I'm reading you correctly, my parse is the exact opposite: the object is what turned up, not the fact.

So "turned up dead", which I tend to associate with unpleasant headlines about someone's car being found in suspicious circs (washed a bit too thoroughly, inside and out, no prints or DNA material anywhere) and with no sign of the owner, is always going to define itself to me as "the missing owner turned up dead".

If someone turns up dead, to me (like Nutty), they might have been dead for yonks. When he turns up dead is when we find out about it.

I've certainly seen 'turned up dead'

Me, too. Also: Turned up drunk.

"Turned up" may be an abbreviation of "turned out to be," i.e. a phrase marking the beginning of being in the adjectival state (missing, lame, dead) rather than meaning the verb's literal content.

This fits with how I've heard it used.

If someone turns up dead, to me (like Nutty), they might have been dead for yonks. When he turns up dead is when we find out about it.

For me, it's a statement of fact: he was found, and when found (whenever that was), he was dead.