Watching as-clauses in Late Modern English

Eventive percepts can be expressed not only by means of non-finite complements, either with an infinitive or a participle (e.g. She watched his hand trace/tracing the words), but also by means of hypotactic integration with or without a direct object (e.g. She watched his hand as it traced the words, She watched as it traced the words). In this paper, I mainly investigate the diachronic development of the relation between these two strategies in the case of the verb watch and the subordinator as in Late Modern English. However, the history of other options such as the use of eventive nominals and adjectives (e.g. She watched the setting of the sun, She watched the setting sun) and small clauses (e.g. He watched her out of sight) is also considered. The historical analysis, carried out mainly using the 400 million word Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), reveals a shift from more nominal to more clausal strategies in the expression of eventive percepts. The non-finite complement option, especially in its infinitive variant, and the hypotactic integration strategy without a direct object, emerged as the preferred options by the end of the last century. The paper concludes with some speculations as to why such changes have taken place.