who's your daddy?

[Wilson Gray]

On Oct 15, 2004, at 3:29 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      who's your daddy?
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> let me try to sum up things so far.  we have two different (groups of)
> uses for this question.
>
> one, as an information question, asking 'who are your people?', 'what's
> your ancestry?'.
>
> two, as a rhetorical question, asking 'who do you belong to?', 'who
> owns you?', 'who dominates you?', with the conveyed answer "me" or
> "us".
>
> arnold
>

IMO, arnold's incisive mind has again pierced to the heart of the
matter. FWIW, back in the '60's, I was once asked, "Who's your father?"
by an older woman who thought that I might possibly be the son of her
long-lost love. (I'm not.)

In today's college football, Notre Dame defeated Navy for the 41st
consecutive time, the longest such streak in the history of football.
After the game, some ND fans dumped on Navy by chanting, "Who's your
daddy?"

-Wilson Gray