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In the conative alternation [CA], the object of thetransitive variant is expressed in a prepositional phrase, with a slight changeof meaning (telicity/resultativity drop). This construction is attested withverbs whose meaning includes both movement and contact (Guerssel et al., 1985; Goldberg1995, Levin &Rappaport[LR] 2015, Leek 1996 i.m.a). Even if the CA is fully productive in many languages, likeEnglish, Danish, German (Beavers 2006), it is generally claimed to be unavailablein Romance (but see Míguez 2016 on Galician). (1)illustrates the alleged restriction in Spanish.(1) a. Juan golpeó los hombres. b. *Juan golpeóen los hombres. Conversely, we contend that theCA is a productive transitivity alternation in Romance. Drawing on novel corpus data (12th-17th c., fromSánchez-Marco et al. 2009 (SM) and Corpus del Español (CES)) from Old Spanish [OSp], we note that OSp CA resembles theEnglish alternation in that it allows similar verb classes?cutting (cortar ?cut?, morder ?bite?)(2), contact (dar ?hit?, tallar ?carve?, disparar ?shoot?)(7); andconsumption verbs (beber ?drink?,comer ?eat?)(5)?toalternate. Crucially,though, we also note that OSp is more flexible, allowingchange-of-state/location (cosl)verbs (3) (matar ?kill?(6), destrozar ?shatter?, destruir ?destroy?, derribar ?knock down?, ferir ?hurt?, romper ?break?) and pure contact verbs (4) in CA. In principle, pure contact and cos verbs not are expected in this construction as they lack the required(motion+contact) components (*Janetbroke/touched at the vase, Levin 1993, Beavers 2011).Further, the fact that COSLverbs in OSp may alternate in a CA is of particular importance as it suggeststhe thus far unattested possibility that certain verbs, like break, may enter thecausative/inchoative alternation andthe CA, which is a pattern often assumed not to occur in natural languages(Levin 1993, 2017 i.a.).proposal. In Consumption Verbs, OSpdata seems to support the observation that conatives are set apart by its lackof result entailment and noncompletive interpretation (Krifka1999). Also inOSp, oblique realization of the object correlates to an interpretive shift fromtelic(5)b toatelic(5)b,reflecting the usual distinction thatrelies on realization of the object in this alternation (LR 2005:212). In fact,we find that all attested telic occurrences of ingestion verbs crucially lackthe preposition. For instance, according to CES and SM data, conative variantscombine with cessar de ?stop? but notwith acavar de ?finish?, which is theprototypical pattern of atelic predicates.In COSL, alternation between direct object/oblique (PP) expressions in OSp also reflect alternationbetween telic/atelic uses. Like(5)a,(6)ais natural as the conative only entails that an unspecified amount of peoplewas killed (cf. causative/transitive entailing total affectedness, hencetelicity). In (3)a theendpoint PP headed by hasta imposesan event boundary that is otherwise missing (cf, mataua en ellos quanto alcançaua ?He killed at them until it was enough?). If follows that, even if the P usedin OSp is different (linked in English to another (body-part-poss) alternation,Levin 1993), it still yields the event-type shift that sets CA apart (van Hout1996 i.a.). In this sense, theseleccional patterns attested in OSp (endpoint PP) are indicative of theexpected contrast (cf. killed #(at) themas many as they could). In Verbs Of Contact, OSp alternationalso yields a similar change in aspectual (Vendler 1967; Dowty 1979) structure.Conatives are nonresultative in the sense that (7)allows for the entailment that contact did not obtain as a result (He shot at them, but didn?t hit them).The generalization proposed for English thus holds, as OSp conatives do notnecessarily involve a result component (nor a result state) and (unlike ModernSpanish conative-like variants (Acevedo 2011)) they succeed in delivering the missed contact entailment expected fromhit-conatives (Dixon 1991); otherwise (7)would be odd. In turn, productivity in (3)-(4) suggests that motion+contact denotation may not be necessary conditions to enter the CA, or at least that the widely-claimedrestriction (LR 2015i.a.) may belanguage-specific (hold for e.g. English).For COSL verbs, we propose that in OSp verbs suggesting a causative/conativealternation differ in the realization of the external argument, instantiating aCause(r)-Agent opposition amenable to a distribution linked to distinctexternal-argument-licensing v headsin the literature. While agents and causes are similar, they differ in onekey feature: while vDO requires an animate agent subject, vCAUSE need not be (Folli & Harley 2005, 2007). We suggest that this differencein realization of the external argument can be seen in the OSp conative withcausative verbs like matar: whereasthe external argument in the causative only needs to be interpretable ascause(r) (La ponçoña lo mato ?The poison killed him?(15thcSM)), the (null) externalargument of matar in the conative ((3)a,(6)a)requires an intentional agent referent, as in all attested cases. Ifcorrect, the analysis for conative (8)a vs.causative (8)balternates could bear on composition with distinct v heads. This would capture the distribution drawn by restrictedinterpretation of subjects (agent inCA) in contrast to causative-alternation instances of the same verbs. Itfollows that, apparently, both derivational paths are available for these verbsat least in OSp. New data (Múgica 2018) from modern (Argentinian) Spanishsupports this possibility, as new verbs show all the hallmarks of aconative-structure-like derivation (result/telicity drop, missed contactentailment). It remains to be seen if (and how) CA availability in (3) inSpanish connects to availability of unaccusative variants of these verbs, incontrast to English (okJuan semató/destruyó|*Juan killed/destroyed).(8) a. [vP[DP1 ,v? [vDO , PP [target en DP2]]]] b. [vP [DP1,v? [vCAUSE, SC [DP2 , RES√]]]]

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