baby daddy

[Victor Steinbok]

All of what Ron said might be true if there is a customary reference to
"baby daddy" that identifies long-lost prodigal fathers, so that when
one of them reappears in the picture, the actual mother (or other
guardian/parental unit) can tell her child, "Actually, this is not just
Uncle Joe--it's your baby daddy!" Wilson may correct me on this if I'm
wrong, but I am not aware of such pervasive use. In fact, it seems, the
context is usually the opposite--"baby daddy" is not merely "baby's
daddy", but "her baby's daddy", with the respective mother being the
referent (or, "my baby's daddy", if the declaration is made by the
mother). The Uncle Joe declaration above actually makes sense if "baby"
is taken out.

In case of "your babysitter", both vertical relationships exist in the
language a priori, so it hardly seems necessary to split the baby in
this context. But "baby daddy" does not imply a vertical
relationship--if the respective "baby mama" has several children, even
if one of them is present when the presumptive father says, "I'm your
baby daddy!", we have no idea which of the children he might have sired,
but it's irrelevant to the point because it's the /horizontal/
relationship (no pun intended) with the /mother/ that's implied. In
these circumstances, the "father" may have no relationship with that
child at all--he may well be the father of one of the half-siblings.

About the only context where the "baby daddy" might actually work
semantically as a joke is Chinatown. But we are not talking about
Chinatown--we're talking about Star Wars.

     VS-)

On 2/19/2011 11:03 AM, ronbutters at AOL.COM wrote:
> While Wilson is right that "baby daddy" is not the EXACT semantic equivalent of "father," it is ALSO not the EXACT semantic equivalent of "baby's father"; it also usually indicates that the child was born out of wedlock or at any rate that the paternity cannot be assumed. (And aren't all fathers "fathers of specific babies"?)
>
> The Darth Vader context (and the real-world knowledge that men do not give birth) makes the secondary meaning the only one that makes sense, suppressing the genitive meaning in favor of a sort of dative one-- as if it were spelled "baby-daddy".
>
> I don't see why the only interpretation that makes sense so difficult for people to accept, except that there is a normal human tendency (often noted by psycholinguists) to cling stubbornly to  the first interpretation that crosses one's mind (even if that interpretation depends on the assumption that the speaker has made a stupid mistake), rejecting all others as "wrong". There is no single right or wrong answer. Compounds in English are subject to various interpretations. The "white house" is not just the place where Mr. Obama currently resides. Nor is etymology at all binding (as Wilson seems to believe). Sometimes, a baby sitter is somebody who watches adults. Or even sits ON babies. Yes, there are dialects in which the possessive marker may be deleted, and "baby daddy" seems to have arisen in one of them as a term meaning 'acknowledged parent of the child'. But "I am your baby daddy" does not have to mean 'I am father of your baby' any more than "I am your babysitter"!
  has to mean 'I am temporary custodian for your children' rather than 'I am temporary child-custodian of you'.
> *********************************

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