Non-abusive tot moms

[Jonathan Lighter]

I was thinking of affected white-folks media usage of "baby daddy."  Few of
those users have any conception that BE could have a systematic zero GEN.

The theory seems to be that if black people (even some of them) have "an
expression" (defined as inclusively as possible) for something, that
expression becomes cool after at least one prominent media appearance.

Justified or otherwise, undoubtedly another manifestation of white liberal
guilt.  Everybody's hawkin' that new way of talkin'!

JL




On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 10:30 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Non-abusive tot moms
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 9:48 AM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Like _baby daddy_.
>
> Not IMO. It would take some serious argument to persuade a BE-speaker
> that he's *not* saying _baby's_ or any other zeroed-out _-'s_ GEN.
> Indeed, he'd probably get pissed off. [Wink, wink, nudge, nudge,
> Charlie!:-)] A headline-writer came up with _tot mom_ in a
> split-second of conscious cogitation, fully aware that _tot_ in this
> case is not _tot's_, any more than _tiger_ in "tiger mom" is
> _tiger's_.
>
> Of course, it would be difficult to provide a knock-down argument that
> "tot mom" is not _tot's mom_. Proving a negative and all that sort of
> rot.
>
> But, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.;-)
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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