This paper presents an in-depth study of the English conative construction (hit the ball vs hit at the ball), a particular case of variation between NP- and PP-patterns. Approaching the phenomenon from a usage-based, cognitive perspective, the study is interested in the different factors driving this alternation, specifically in the interaction of lexical effects on the one hand and high-level predictors relating to processing complexity on the other hand. More specifically, the paper explores the diachronic dimension of these effects, using corpus data from Middle English to Late Modern English (Penn-Helsinki Corpora of Historical English; 1150–1914). To assess the relative impact of the variables, the study compares the traditionally used methods of collostructional analysis and logistic regression to a more recent tool, namely elastic net regression. The findings ultimately indicate that while complexity does seem to play a role in this alternation, there are also strong lexical effects.
