Changes and explanations

Abstract

This chapter evaluates proposals that have been put forward to explain the loss of dative external possessors in English. The leading explanation using internal developments as a trigger links the syntactic change with a morphological one, namely the loss of the dative as a separate case. This explanation cannot explain the early decline of the construction and offers no explanation for why internal possessors should have become the rule in dialects retaining rich case marking at the same time as ones which had lost the dative case. Of the explanations based on language contact, the Celtic Hypothesis is the only one with any serious plausibility. The evidence suggests that Celtic learners of English did not fail to learn the dative external possessor construction, but they may have been instrumental in its initial decline by narrowing the range of the construction.