Drawing on usage-based cognitively oriented construction grammar, this paper investigates the patterns of coattraction of items that appear in the two VP positions (the VP in the matrix clause, and the VP in the infinitive subordinate clause) in the English accusative-with-bare-infinitive construction. The main methodological framework is that of covarying collexeme analysis, which, through statistical corpus analysis, allows for the analyst to address the semantics of a construction. Using this method on data from the BNC, the ultimate purpose of the paper is to address the underlying semantic relations of English accusatives-with-bare-infinitives through the relations of semantic coherence between the two VPs.