Nouns as adjectives question?

Question

I have a question regarding this sentence > Yesterday, I went to the mall to buy **child clothing/clothes** for my baby. Is it wrong to write it this way? Or should it be *children*? Because I always see this phrase "Baby Clothing" on every commercial/advertisement. I looked up the internet, but the majority use "Children Clothing", but I don't know why 'child clothing' is wrong.

Answer 1

It's really a question of use, like you said. In general, we say "children's clothing," not "child clothing," even though the latter isn't technically wrong in a grammatical sense. Note the possessive: not "children clothing," but "children's clothing." The same goes for, say, "men's clothing" or "women's clothing." I guess "baby clothing" is kind of an outlier in this regard.

Though overall, for this sentence, I think it would be best just to say "clothes" or "clothing," since the reader still knows who they're for. If you said you bought clothing for a baby, I'd automatically assume you bought baby clothes. I mean, it would be silly to buy adult clothes for a baby to wear, you know?

Answer 2

The reason the term 'child clothing' would be awkward is because it suggests that the clothing you purchase will be suitable for someone who is a child, which could be interpreted as someone from the age of one day old to perhaps 10-years-old.. It is therefore ambiguous. The function of using adjectives is to be specific. A baby suggests someone from one day old to perhaps three years old, which particularizes the concept of the clothes. In addition there are many terms in a language that are deemed correct owing to long-term usage, not necessarily because of a certain 'rule' of language. English, in particular, is given to developing modes of expression via usage rather than abstract grammatical formulations because there is no English language academy, which makes 'rulings' on words and terms. This is different from languages such as French or Spanish, which both have "official' academies that make judgments regarding usage. That may be one reason that English has become the lingua franca of the contemporary world: because it is so pliable and malleable so that it changes to suit a changing culture with changing technologies.