Constructional Death by Coercion

This study investigates the disappearance of the English Double Object Construction (DOC) expressing ‘dispossession’ in Middle and Early Modern English from the perspective of coercion. While coercion has traditionally been discussed as a mechanism facilitating the emergence of novel or nonconventionalized constructions, this paper argues that it can also function as a factor in constructional death--the gradual obsolescence and eventual loss of a construction from the grammar. Focusing on verbs of dispossession, especially steal, the study demonstrates how the ‘dispossession’-DOC is and may historically have been coerced into a ‘transfer-of-possession-like’ interpretation, drawing on Boas's (2011) framework of “leakage.” The findings offer a new theoretical perspective on language change and on the dynamics of constructional networks within Diachronic Construction Grammar.