This paper investigates the historical development of four complement types of the perception verb widzieć 'see' in Polish, namely the AcI, the adverbial participle, the participium coniunctum and the complement clauses introduced że / iż(e) 'that' and jak 'how'. A special focus is on the complement semantics. It turns out that in the history of Polish, a discrete system of complement semantics existed, with the AcI on the hand rendering 'acquired knowledge' and the adverbial participle and participium coniunctum rendering 'object of perception' on the other hand.