animate _wa-_

["Alfred W. Tüting"]

Linda,

 >Alfred’s examples of hausschlachten and radfahren, although they
appear to have the same structure, are actually different.  Schlachten
and fahren are both two-place predicates. In radfahren, one place is
taken by Rad, the NP ‘bicycle’, object of fahren, so in “ich fahre Rad,
both arguments are overt. In hausschlachten, haus- is not nominal but
adverbial - it simply states where the Schlachtung will occur.  In
“Morgen werden wir hausschlachten”, the object is implied, not overt.
If you said, “Wir hausschlachten unser Vieh” then both arguments (wir,
Vieh) are visible, and you see that “haus-“ isn’t one of them!
This accounts for the ungrammaticality of *morgen schlachten wir haus.<<

thank you for shedding some light on this issue, yet, I'm only half
convinced:
Other than with _schlachten_, I wouldn't be sure to regard
_(rad-)fahren_ as a two-place predicate. Not unlike _fahren_ (ich
fahre...), it seems to appear as a one-place one, since understood as
_ich fahre *mit* einem Rad_ rather than _ich fahre das/ein Rad_ (the
part 'rad' seems to be instrumental and maybe not a direct object
'compounded' with the verb). To me, 'haus-' and 'rad-' both seem to be
comparable with 'ti-' of, say, _tikte_ or _tii'un_ denoting location,
means etc. (in German, adverbial, in Lakota, maybe a - former - topic
incorporated in the comment's one-word sentence).

Plz compare:

fahren (intransitive: ich fahre),
schlachten (transitive: ich schlachte etw.)

radfahren (still intransitive + instrument)
heimfahren (to drive home: intransitive + destination)
hausschlachten (still transitive + location)

And, I don't think that "und morgen schlachten wir haus" actually is
ungrammatical - just bloody unfamiliar to hear! :-)

Nevertheless, I think there's something special with compound verbs like
'radfahren', 'autofahren': Ich fahre rad/Rad, ...fahre auto/Auto

and(!) 'heimfahren': "ich fahre heim", but not "ich heimfahre" (although
_heim_ is NOT a direct object!)

On the other hand, your point seems to be supported by the new
orthographic rules cf. "Rad fahren", "Auto fahren" (which might express
a moreorless subconscious understanding among great parts of the
speakers of these particles denoting a direct object).

Out of my pretty naive angle, Lakota and German are having quite a
couple of common traits.

Best regards

Alfred