This paper aims at investigating verb polysemy in French from a diachronic point of view and using frequency computing tools. Verb sense diversification usually involves variation in the argument realization, but the counterpart is not always valid. Developping a new sense basically involves combining an aspectual, a role semantic and/or a conceptual variation.

The basic tenets are tested by investigating the polysemy of verbs exhibiting at least one linguistic sense. Historically the linguistic sense is either primary or derived against the non linguistic senses. Concerning basically communicational verbs, the emergence of a non linguistic sense of four verbs of request is historically located. Concerning verbs with a derived linguistic sense, the same investigation is made for the emergence of that sense. Finally, two groups of 20 verbs with primary or derived linguistic sense are contrasted as to the frequence of their construction with an object clause.

The study does not yield any direct prediction about the organization of the mental lexicon, but it suggests hypotheses to be tested by means of psycholinguistics.