"Admissions office" would work, according to most grammars, but I don't think it does. I think the plural -s merged with the -s of "physics" and the -s of "dependence" about 400 years ago to become a new nominalizing suffix. There are cases, like this, where the case isn't entirely clear, but it becomes clearer when we say, "Admissions is where you have to send your new transcripts." I think the singular agreement is due to the fact that that -s is no longer a plural marker but is now a nominalizer. I have a paper coming out on this shortly in Word that I did with a couple of grad students.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
[log in to unmask]
________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: April 2, 2009 4:22 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Lester's text in the classroom (was: Phrasal Verb Overview)
Mea maxima culpa! This is what happens when I don’t check my own examples. At this point, I’ll vow to use it as an extremely effective humility-enhancer next time I want to scold a student for… doing the same thing.
Perhaps “admissions office” would work?
--- Bill Spruiell
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Dews-Alexander
Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 3:45 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Lester's text in the classroom (was: Phrasal Verb Overview)
Yes, I agree. When I first read Bill's message, I understood his intent and didn't even notice the problem with "accounts receivable." Bill's statement, as I understood it, works just fine if we replace the phrase in question with a clearly adjectival noun:
"Teacher, you said only nouns could be plural, but in 'the computers picture' the adjective seems plural."
I use this example because I said it today. I was reviewing a marketing piece that contained pictures of various things: computers, office supplies, people, etc. I quickly grew tired of saying, "The picture of the computers" and switched to "the computers picture" (I noticed that by the end of the conversation I simplified even more to "the computer picture").
Just my intuition -- plural adjectival nouns are probably less common than singular adjectival nouns. They do occur though!
John Alexander
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 12:21 PM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
This is so unusual that I have to respond, but I find myself agreeing with Brad. “Accounts receivable” is one of those formulaic constructions we have in English, some borrowed from French, like “courts martial,” “lobster Newburg,” “steak tartar,” and also “attorneys-at-law” and “brothers-in-law.” Of course, those with phrasal modifiers, like the last two, have the order they’d normally have in English.
Herb
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>] On Behalf Of Brad Johnston
Sent: 2009-04-02 10:37
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Lester's text in the classroom (was: Phrasal Verb Overview)
one of the things that constantly causes problems for anyone trying to teach the material (“You said only nouns could be plural, but in ‘accounts receivable,’ the adjective is”).
Bill: this is incorrect. The noun is "account" and more than one are "accounts". The descriptive adjective is "receivable", often in standard accounting referred to as "receivables", which is then a noun. The accounts are "receivable accounts" but in the parlance of the trade, they are "accounts receivable". I wonder if that makes it clearer or less so. In any event, in "accounts receivable", "accounts" is the noun.
Just clearing the files and noticed this.
.brad.02apr09.
--- On Tue, 3/24/09, Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
From: Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Subject: Lester's text in the classroom (was: Phrasal Verb Overview)
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tuesday, March 24, 2009, 12:52 PM
John,
I’ve used Lester’s book a number of times in a course here for future English teachers. Overall, I’d say there’s one major problem with it, but otherwise it’s extremely good. The problem is that he doesn’t make a clear form/function distinction. I’m not sure why he doesn’t – it could be that he’s trying to stick to the K-12 school grammar tradition, which is understandable, but the lack of that distinction is one of the things that constantly causes problems for anyone trying to teach the material (“You said only nouns could be plural, but in ‘accounts receivable,’ the adjective is”).
The book is so good in other respects that I’ve continued to use it, using handouts to deal with the form/function distinction. But, of course, then the students get annoyed because I’m disagreeing with the textbook, and I get annoyed with them because the last thing future teachers should do is view a textbook (or their instructor’s comments!) as Holy Writ.
Sincerely,
Bill Spruiell
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>] On Behalf Of John Dews-Alexander
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 8:00 PM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Phrasal Verb Overview
Greetings, ATEGers!
Someone (I believe it was Herb) recently suggested a book to me: Mark Lester's (1990) Grammar in the Classroom. I'm not sure why I haven't discovered this book before, but I quite like it and would suggest it to anyone reviewing grammar texts. Even if you can't use it in your classroom, you and/or your students might enjoy knowing about it as a reference text. I find Lester's writing to be straightforward and uncluttered. Has anyone actually used this as a classroom text for teachers-in-training? If so, I'd be interested to hear about your experiences.
I went to the text specifically to find some more information on phrasal verbs, information that wasn't overly technical for non-linguistic students but also not overly simplified so as to ignore descriptive facts. I thought I'd share here a few of the main points about phrasal verbs that Lester includes.
* Lester suggests that phrasal verbs are part of Latin and Germanic languages' process of creating new words by adding prepositions (functional words) to verb stems. Latin languages tended to add the preposition to the beginning of the verb stem with Germanic languages adding them to the end. (example, "devour" from "de-" (down) and "voro" (swollow) in Latin)
* When English forms a new word by adding a preposition to the beginning of a verb stem (example, "bypass" "offset"), it is more quickly and easily recognized as a new word; people forget that it used to be a phrasal verb/verb +preposition combination because, orthographically, it is written without a space. However, English tends to leave the space when the preposition is added to the end of the verb stem. (example, "give up")
* While a sentence like "I give up" may look like a pronoun, a tensed verb, and an adverbial preposition, it is in fact a pronoun and a phrasal verb (note: I always learned to call the preposition that has become attached to a verb in such a way a "particle," but Lester continues to call it a preposition, which doesn't bother me at all). Lester points out a fun test for phrasal verbs -- can you replace the unit with a single word (almost always of Latin origin) and retain the meaning? In this case, "I give up" becomes "I surrender." (Lester points out the irony in the fact that "surrender" was once itself a phrasal verb in Latin!)
* Phrasal verbs can be transitive; this can mark the difference between a phrasal verb and a verb+preposition combo even more. For example,
John turned out the light. (Noun subject+phrasal verb+noun phrase object)
John turned at the light. (Noun subject+verb+adverbial prepositional phrase)
Say the sentences out loud and notice the stress. In phrasal verbs the preposition is stressed while it is not in the PP.
* Phrasal verbs can have more than one preposition/particle: look down on, talk back to, walk out on, etc.
* Lester points out that phrasal verbs were dumped from traditional school grammars because the word "preposition" in Latin literally means "to place before," and it was reasoned that prepositions couldn't be connected to verbs if they came after them. Sometimes phrasal verbs were treated as idioms.
* Structural linguists have noted the difference between separable and inseparable phrasal verbs.Separable phrasal verbs have prepositions that can be moved to a position after the object noun phrase (example, "I gave up the game" vs "I gave the game up" or "I gave it up"). Inseparable phrasal verbs have prepositions that cannot be moved (example, "I depend on the income" vs *"I depend the income on" or *"I depend it on").
* As you can see from the above examples, when the object of a separable transitive phrasal verb is a pronoun, the movement of the preposition is obligatory. You would always say "I gave it up" and never *"I gave up it." (I think I would cringe if I heard this avoided with some clunky construction like, "Up it is that I gave it.") In this sense, it is actually ungrammatical to NOT end a sentence with a preposition.
Hope all the grammar nerds enjoy this as much as I did!
Regards,
John Alexander
Austin, Texas
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|
