Los complementos con en del gallego: una alternancia transitivo/oblicuo

In Galician, a large set of transitive verbs displays a diathesis alternation, in which its direct object is realized as an oblique complement introduced by the preposition en ‘in’. This contribution analyzes the syntax and semantics of the phenomenon in order to unravel key aspects that have been ignored by previous work. At the syntactic level, the extended idea that complements introduced by en are direct objects is refuted, and the possibility is noted of the alternation taking place with verbs that select an indirect object as their second argument. At the semantic level, it is concluded that the structure introduced by en describes a dynamic, durative, atelic event that entails agentivity. This way, this article intends to contribute to our understanding of a construction that is unique among Romance languages.