baby daddy

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Wrong again, Victor!--whose analysis would be true if there were only one rule for the interpretation of English compound words and speakers therefore were unable to apply alternative analyses to compounds to derive sensible meanings in given contexts. The reading 'baby-father to you' for "your baby father" depends only the exploitation of ordinary rules of English compound construal in a context where the "dative" reading makes sense. And in fact, that is exactly what Wilson and Victor did, after they reconciled the utterance in question with the obvious fact that a man could not be the biological father of another man's biological baby. But because this perfectly sensible readingvdid not square with their narrow, prescriptive notion that "baby daddy" could only mean "baby's daddy" (based on an etymological argument) they concluded that the authors had somehow blundered. The only blunder was in forcing a narrow prescriptivist reading on the utterance in question.

Of course Victor is right that "baby daddy" is rarely used in the way it was in the parody. But that has no bearing whatever on whether my analysis is "true." Indeed, my analysis is the one that Victor and everybody else seems to agree makes sense.

I don't understand at all Victor's discussion of vertical relationships, splitting babies, and (especially) jokes in Chinatown.  All I was trying to convey was that "your babysitter" can refer either to the person who sits with your children or the person sits with you. Similarly, "your baby daddy" can refer to the person who is daddy to your children or the person who is daddy to you. Pretty much the same rules. No splitting of babies or verticalizing daddies or whatever.

Sent from my iPad

On Feb 19, 2011, at 12:09 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> 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'.
>> *********************************
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org