[es] False negative in Spanish

Hi! I’ve found an error in an Spanish sentence.

The right sentence will be: “Las estrellas iluminan el cielo”.

Thank you Carla for reporting it.

However, I don’t see which grammar rule is broken here. As I see it both ways are valid but with different sense.

According to the Royal Spanish Academy, “iluminar” is a transitive verb, so it requires a direct object, which is not found in the example sentence.

Carla,

At this point LanguageTool is not able to distinguish most “verbal regimes” in Spanish. It could do it but only in very restricted contexts, because otherwise we will get an annoying amount of false alarms.

As for your sentence, most transitive verbs can be used in “absolute use”, so “Las estrellas iluminan” is a grammatically correct sentence, “en el cielo” being just a place complement (complemento circunstancial de lugar) not a verbal complement (complemento de régimen verbal).