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]>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]] *On Behalf Of *Brad Johnston
> *Sent:* 2009-04-02 10:37
> *To:* [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]>* wrote:
>
>
> From: Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Lester's text in the classroom (was: Phrasal Verb Overview)
> To: [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]] *On Behalf Of *John Dews-Alexander
> *Sent:* Monday, March 23, 2009 8:00 PM
> *To:* [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
>
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