Bringing down the house? (animate wa-)

[Rory M Larson]

Linda,

> Alfred’s examples of hausschlacten 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
> hausschlacten, haus- is not nominal but adverbial - it simply states
where the
> Schlactung will occur.  In “Morgen werden wir hausschlacten”, the object
is
> implied, not overt.  If you said, “Wir hausschlacten 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 schlacten wir haus.

Just to make sure I'm up to speed on your terminology,
could you confirm the meaning of "two-place predicate"?
Does that just mean a verb that takes two arguments,
typically subject/agent and object?

Thanks!

Rory