Case Study 1

The combination of a diachronic and a synchronic approach has proved to be very fruit ful in recent linguistic research. Whereas until relatively recently historical studies had been ignored by the most prominent linguistic theories, such as Government and Binding (GB), Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), and Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), which carried out their analyses from an exclusively synchronic point of view, it is now ac cepted that only by reference to earlier historical periods can we find an explanation to the present state of the language. Sweetser, Traugott, Hopper and Bybee among others have emphasized the importance of diachronic studies. The need of a historical perspective is es pecially evident in the study o f polysemy, because it can bring to light not only the interrela tionship of the different subsenses, which are apparently unrelated from a syn chronic point of view, but also the importance of the complementation in determining and disambiguating its main senses. We will present a case study, the polysemous verb WATCH, and will show that its cur rent meanings are connected in a motivated way and that its complementation can solve the ambiguity produced by its polysemy. The Renaissance was a crucial per iod in its historical development, since it was in this period that the complementation of the verb began to in teract with its semantic features and gave rise to its main current sense. It was also then that the earliest meanings of the verb were lost, so the present meanings of WATCH took shape in this period. At the end of the Middle English period and beginning of the Modern English period, WATCH still keeps its early, Old English, meanings, ‘be or remain awake’ and ‘be on the alert’, ‘keep watch’, which are intransitive: