Talk:give suck
Latest comment: 6 years ago by Widsith in topic Could someone explain the etymology?
Could someone explain the etymology?
[edit]How is "suck" not a noun here? How is "give + INFINITIVE" possible? Equinox ◑ 07:05, 6 January 2018 (UTC)
- You can tell because in some early use, they still used the full infinitive form with "to", like in Chaucer: ‘To rokken and to yeue the child to sowke.’ This is quite a common construction in Germanic (per OED) – German has zu saugen geben and in Dutch there's te zuigen geven. Ƿidsiþ 07:13, 6 January 2018 (UTC)