Baby's an It (call of the obstetrician?)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

Jan Freeman writes about ADS-L discussion here, singling out comments
by Lynne Murphy and Wilson Gray:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/09/28/a_girl_called_it/



On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 9:32 AM, Lynne Murphy <m.l.murphy at sussex.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> A few observations from recent experience:
>
> Referring to babies as 'it' can't just be because of the difficulty in
> sexing clothed babies by sight, since (at least in older generation BrE),
> it's used of babies whose sex is known--as in the example of our friend who
> calls our baby 'it' even though he knows very well that she's a she.  When
> he was holding her the other day, he'd say things like "It's really getting
> strong now"  or "It's really interested in this paper".  The man is a
> father himself, so I'm always shocked by what I perceive as him referring
> to a person as a thing.
>
> 'Baby' as proper noun/pronoun substitute is alive and well in the midwifery
> profession here.  I was in the hospital for my third trimester (what there
> was of it) and beyond, so heard a lot of "Let's see what Baby is doing" and
> "when Baby is born..."  It got quite annoying after a while (I'd have
> preferred 'your baby'), I have to say, but much better than 'it' .
>
> Before ours was born, we didn't know the sex, but used 'he' because 'it'
> didn't sound nice to us --and we called her 'Grover', which is part of why
> 'he' came naturally.  I got so used to it, that I was quite surprised when
> we had a girl.  I'm trying very hard to refer to her stuffed animals as
> 'she' and to give them girly names--but that's not working very well.
>
> Last night there was a good example of generic baby 'it' on a formula ad
> (Heinz Nurture) on British tv.  I can't remember it exactly, but something
> like 'we care about your baby and its nutrition'.  It struck me that an
> American ad would probably use a sexed pronoun there with visuals that said
> 'here's a boy baby' or 'here's a girl baby'.
>
> For what it's worth, checking on google:
>
> "your baby and its" = 8990 hits
> of the first 30, 14 are examples in which 'its' refers to 'your baby'.
> Since I'm in the UK, it's probably not reliable that many of the early
> examples are from the UK, since the same is true of the next search.
>
> "your baby and their" = 53,000 hits
> of the first 30, 25 are examples of 'their' = 'your baby'.
>
> OK, that's enough real work avoidance for now!
> Lynne
>
> --On 09 September 2008 22:29 -0400 Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> wrote:
>
> > At 10:12 PM -0400 9/9/08, Mark Mandel wrote:
> >> Whatever you call it, "mommy", "daddy", etc., fall into the same
> >> category, except that they can also refer to the speaker.
> >>
> >> m a m
> >
> > Yes, sort of indexical names.  I'm not sure "Mommy" and "Daddy" [as
> > indexical names] are that different in function from "yours truly",
> > "{this/your faithful} correspondent", "the present writer", etc.,
> > except that they're used more with children.   As far as the illeism
> > component, children at the toddler stage often use their own name in
> > place of the first person pronoun too.  (But I guess not "Baby",
> > except for Baby Houseman in "Dirty Dancing".)
> >
> > LH
> >
> >>
> >> On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 7:36 PM, Laurence Horn
> >> <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:
> >>
> >>>  At 4:10 PM -0700 9/9/08, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
> >>>  > I've often wondered if "baby" should be considered a pronoun. You see
> >>>  > it in sentences like (making them up):
> >>>  >
> >>>  > When baby gets into trouble
> >>>  >
> >>>  > My guess is you also see:
> >>>  >
> >>>  > When doggy won't obey
> >>>  > When kitty won't come
> >>>  >
> >>>  > BB
> >>>
> >>>  More a proper name than a pronoun, I'd reckon.
> >>>
> >>>  LH
> >>>
> >>>  >
> >>>  > On Sep 9, 2008, at 3:55 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> >>>  >
> >>>  >> -
> >>>  >> Of course, the use of "it" simplifies one's grammar. When writing a
> >>>  >> paper on babies or children, authors can simply use "it" instead of
> >>>  >> using "he ... her," "she ... him" or other grammatical asininities
> >>>  >> in a silly effort not to appear genderist, as though the 99.44% of
> >>>  >> the population that has no interest whatsoever in scholarly papers
> >>>  >> of any kind would give a flying fox at a rolling doughnut about this
> >>>  >> "problem" with the English language.
> >>>  >>

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