Talk:give birth

give birth
Rfd-redundant: "To invent a new idea" Besides being poorly worded and missing mention of the almost mandatory "to", this misses the possibility that one could be deemed to have "given birth" to a product, project, organization, etc. A more general figurative sense "To become the source of" encompasses the idea, but might benefit from rewording.

Also, is the expression "give birth" in its literal transitive and intransitive senses limited to mammals and marsupials (excluding fictional universes) or is it applied to fish, birds, bacteria, etc. ? DCDuring TALK 15:00, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I suspect that some of the translations do not match the specific events ("moment" of childbirth) or processes ("labor") covered by this term. If the problem seems widespread, all of the translations would need s. DCDuring TALK 15:19, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I can only see two definitions here. The 'literal' to create a new life via the birthing process, and the figurative to 'create' sense. Sense definitions one and two both have the same context labels, I'd suggest they're the same. Simply the first example says 'give birth' and the second says 'give birth to a '. These aren't different definitions! Delete the sense in question, and merge definitions (1) and (2) into a single one (they already share a translation table). Mglovesfun (talk) 16:30, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, should they share a translation table? Does give birth to merit a separate entry as a phrasal verb? DCDuring TALK 17:34, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * IMO no, it's just use of the verb to give birth with an indirect object (definition #2) and without one. Perhaps analogous to talk and talk at (someone). Mglovesfun (talk) 17:38, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I have a problem with the literal definitions. I've typically considered the term "to give birth" to refer the actual process of parturition; that is, when the offspring get pushed out. As far as I could find, the term is only used for viviparous animals (so an animal can't "give birth" to an egg). I've found attestations for viviparous mammals, fish, reptiles, and insects. Secondly, the definition says (of female mammals and marsupials), which is silly because 1) marsupials are mammals, and 2) the monotremes (platypus and echidna) are also mammals, but lay eggs, so they don't actually "give birth." Ackatsis 08:32, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the help. Feel free to reword. If the only exceptions are monotremes, "of mammals" or "of almost all mammals" might suffice, but perhaps "of mammals except monotremes" would be better. BTW, is the ordinary person's use of the term limited to the "moment" of parturition or does it extend to any portion of labor? I hypothesize that it does, most apparently in some uses of progressive aspect. DCDuring TALK 09:23, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * 2007 Deborah Espect, My Self the Enemy, p269
 * I think I'm giving birth. My waters broke.
 * This seems to cover your latter definition. On an unrelated note, I'm finding lots of citations for "giving birth via cesarean section," so it seems the mode by which the baby gets out doesn't matter. Ackatsis 10:33, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I had a go at fixing up sense #1.
 * To release live offspring from the body into the environment
 * "Of viviparous animals" encompasses all the mammal, reptile, fish and insect species that give birth to live young. For the definition, I tried to capture the fact that "giving birth" is not the act of "producing offspring," but rather getting them out into the open world. In the quote I cited above, "giving birth" also refers to the period of labor. I wasn't sure how to word the definition to include this sense. Ackatsis 10:55, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Note that this seems to have turned into an RFC debate, which I'm usually in favour of when there are senses that are clearly redundant. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:58, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete the sense "To invent a new idea" as redundant to the sense "(intransitive, figuratively, usually with to) To become the source of". However, the latter sense was added by DCDuring on 18 September 2010 in the same edit in which he added "rfd-redundant", so I in effect vote for keeping at least one figurative sense of "to give birth", while I agree that "To invent a new idea" is unduly specific. I don't see why RFD was needed for what was basically a correction of an existing figurative sense. --Dan Polansky 12:58, 14 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Striking as rfd deleted. For deletion: DCDuring, Mglovesfun, Dan Polansky. Unclear: Ackatsis. --Dan Polansky 13:01, 14 November 2010 (UTC)