On the homonymy of ‘put’ and ‘suck’ in Proto-Indo-European

Abstract

PIE *dheh1- ‘to put, make’ and *dheh1-(i-) ‘to suck (mother’s milk)’ look like two separate verbal roots with a very different meaning, which happen to be homonymous. Yet recent investigations have shown that the morphological behaviour of both verbs is more similar than was previously thought. This article offers a re-evaluation of the evidence and explores the options to bridge the semantic gap between ‘put’ and ‘suck’.