this weekend

[Lynne Murphy]

> On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Michael Israel wrote:
>
>>> My boss and I were having an argument over the meaning of "this/next
>>> weekend." It was the middle of the week, and I referred to "next
>>> weekend" meaning the one in couple days. He understood me to mean the
>>> one over a week away and then insisted that I mispoke. I said that
>>> there are regional understandings of this/next weekend and that we just
>>> used the phrases differently.  He thought I was crazy.


I have this problem _all_ the time.  I use 'next' as your boss does, but
many of my English friends use it as you do.  BUT, I'm not altogether
convinced this is a dialectal feature--I have the same problems in the
States.  I think the this/next distinction is almost idiosyncratic.

Lynne




Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
Acting Director, MA Applied Linguistics

School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Falmer
Brighton BN1 9QH
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