Verb Complements Governed by en

This work aims at improving the understanding of the identity of the preposition en within the verbal complementation framework. We continue in continuity with the theoretical approach of Saussure & Harris, for whom language is an autonomous system whose semantic structure can't be defined through referential or conceptual intuition. We studied the structures N1 V en N2 and N0 V N1 en N2 through a large corpus, thanks to software that facilitates the sorting & classifying of the data. Syntactic tests listed verbs admitting the prepositional group en N as a complement, & classified them into three groups: those that establish N0 identity (Ses adieux consisterent en trois baisers 'Their goodbyes consisted of three kisses', La cylindree s'exprime en centimetres cubes 'Capacity is expressed in cubic centimeters'), those that suppose N0 (L'infirmie$FRre sembla gagner en absurde 'The nurse seemed to become more absurd') or N1 (Lucienne me fournissait en chansons 'Lucien supplied me with songs') modification & those that assume N0 or N1 transformation (La personne s'evanouirait en chimere 'The person would vanish like a dream'). The property of the en preposition is to present en N as constituting & defining for the subject (or object) during the statement. References. Adapted from the source document