>>(e.g. a bill) amass, create<<
Is "run up" meaning amass used in any context but debt ('ran up a huge collection'?)? Is it *ever used to mean create where "create" cannot be replaced by "amass" ('God amassed the heavens and the Earth' (though I like that))? The question, I think, is what we will or won't still anticipate when we run into the particle. In your first sentence, once you've said 'bill' there just isn't much place to go but up; in the second -- if it were accepted as a sentence -- we would be left wondering whether the verb was transitive or intransitive, that is, whether the sentence is complete: did they run into an old friend, or did they run an old friend into an alley and take his wallet?
Relatedly, I always wonder if there isn't an unrecognized class of verbs in English that is similar to the seperable prefix verbs in German.
Not that I would qualify as a prescriptivist, even if I wanted to be one.
