5 ms·

> It’s always so hard to describe “next Wednesday” if it’s Monday 'Next Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of the calendar week following the current calendar

by pxc 2y ago

> It’s always so hard to describe “next Wednesday” if it’s Monday 'Next Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of the calendar week following the current calendar week; doesn't matter what day of the week it currently is. 'This Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of current week on the calendar— even if that day is in the past. Is it quirky that this expression doesn't instead mean 'the next Wednesday that will occur'? Yes, definitely. But I don't see how it's difficult to describe what it actually does mean. > I stopped saying “this <day>” or “next <day>” and now just say “Wednesday the 25th” for instance. I love this. Indexicals in general can be tricky, and I love expressions that rely less or very little at all on context. Sometimes when a friend is telling a complicated story I'll ask them to repeat something tbey just said but with no use of pronouns, for instance, and it always makes interpretation much easier. As much as I think the actual idioms are perfectly describable, they are somewhat prominently misused. One of my pet peeves is how YouTube's search filters uses its time restriction phrases incorrectly: it says 'today' to mean 'within the past 24 hours', 'this week' to mean 'within the past week', 'this year' to mean 'within the past year', etc. It's Tuesday, and when I search for videos with an upload date from 'this week', I get results including videos uploaded 4 days ago, but this week is not yet 4 days old under any standard convention (e.g., starting the week on Mondays rather than Sundays)... -_-

anon84873628 2y ago
Your pattern of: '<term>' is always <my definition>; doesn't matter <other factor>. Is never going to be true in spoken language. Otherwise we wouldn't be having conversations about confusion and ambiguity in the first place.
- pxc 2y ago
  At any given time, the lexicon is evolving and some idioms are expanding or on the verge of extinction. Still, there are uses of words and phrases that can reasonably be described as simply wrong at a given time, based on a failure to understand the idiom whose invocation is being attempted. Errors that are sufficiently popular and persistent will eventually just reshape the language, but for a time even an error that is pretty popular or fairly long-lived is still recognizable as an error. By my intuition, I'd say the uses of 'this week' and friends I described as improper qualify handily, not being all that widespread yet. A couple more marginal examples that stand out to me because erroneous uses are much more common: 'let alone' (which is binary and often used with subject and object reversed), the distinction between envy and jealousy. You can take up a radical descriptivist position, e.g., that anything spoken by adult native speakers of normal faculties is never erroneous, or re-scope my assertions by saying that I'm gatekeeping speakers who see such usage as correct from my perceived language community or tradition, whatever, but imo the first is trivial and the second boring. Sometimes specialists misappropriate methodological constraints from their discipline as general ontological or social principles, often discounting an inherent normativity in the way people actually relate to the things those specialists study. I think that's essentially at the heart of the most inflated and controversial uses of concepts like cultural relativism and linguistic descriptivism, and probably applies to nonspecific objections like the one you make above (as opposed to pointing at some specific dialectal variation in the use of such phrases or something like that).
PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
> 'Next Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of the calendar week following the current calendar week; doesn't matter what day of the week it currently is. 'This Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of current week on the calendar— even if that day is in the past. Nope. This is highly contingent on "which day of the week starts a week" conventions. If it is Sunday, then "next Wednesday" does not clearly mean the day 10 days from now ... and which one you lean toward will depend (in part) on "week starts on Monday" or "week starts on Sunday".
- pxc 2y ago
  Yes, the boundaries of the calendar week is a convention that varies and impacts the description I gave in a straightforward and obvious way, so you can expect complications with different conventions on the boundaries of each week. :) Things are also a bit complicated where I live by the fact that 'this weekend' and 'next weekend' follow the same pattern as I described before, but in a way consistent with calendar weeks beginning on Monday rather than Sunday— even though calendars here conventionally start the week on Sunday and usage of 'this <day of week>' and 'next <day of week>' align with that. Anyhow, the variation you are getting at is already captured in the description I gave: as the calendar (week boundaries) varies, so does the description's meaning. The description is already indexed to a particular calendar (as is the expression, unfortunately implicitly). :p My claim was that the meaning is easy enough to describe, not that the phrase is unambiguous. That a phrase can be used ambiguously doesn't mean that descriptions/definitions/characterizations of its general meaning actually have to be ambiguous or vague themselves. Still yeah, this is a real problem for conversations between people who aren't looking at the same calendar/don't understand a shared convention for week boundaries.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    > Things are also a bit complicated where I live by the fact that 'this weekend' and 'next weekend' follow the same pattern as I described before, but in a way consistent with calendar weeks beginning on Monday rather than Sunday— even though calendars here conventionally start the week on Sunday and usage of 'this <day of week>' and 'next <day of week>' align with that. My sense is that weekend nomenclature is even more confusing. If it is Monday, and I say "next weekend", I'd wager there's a greater proportion of English speakers (at least) who would understand that to mean the two day period that starts in roughly another 4 days. That is: "next weekend" referred to at any time before (possibly) Friday means "the next one to occur", not "the one that is a part of the next calendar week". By contrast, on Friday "next weekend" pretty clearly means the two days that will occur in about 7 days, rather than "this weekend" meaning the two days that start in less than 24 hours.
alistairSH 2y ago
'Next Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of the calendar week following the current calendar week; doesn't matter what day of the week it currently is. 'This Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of current week on the calendar— even if that day is in the past. Is it quirky that this expression doesn't instead mean 'the next Wednesday that will occur'? Yes, definitely. But I don't see how it's difficult to describe what it actually does mean. That's the way it's supposed to be, at least as spoken in the part of Scotland from where my family hails. But the Americans I know seem to get it wrong about half the time. What I haven't figured out is if it's a regional (dialectical) thing, or just certain people being "dense", or simply never having been taught the rule.
- caseyohara 2y ago
  I’ve lived in the US my whole life and I don’t recall anyone ever getting it wrong. Except this scene in Seinfeld which is obviously Jerry being pedantic for comedic effect. > Sid: Well I'm going down to visit my sister in Virginia next Wednesday, for a week, so I can't park it. > Jerry: This Wednesday? > Sid: No, next Wednesday, week after this Wednesday. > Jerry: But the Wednesday two days from now is the next Wednesday. > Sid: If I meant this Wednesday, I would have said this Wednesday. It's the week after this Wednesday.
- SilasX 2y ago
  Yeah, I've given up on expecting to know what people will understand "next Wednesday" to mean. I either say "this coming Wednesday" or "next week on Wednesday". Problems solved. Well, usually. I've still had conversations like this: Me: "It'll be next week on Wednesday." Them: "Whoa, slow down there. Do you mean this coming Wednesday, or next week on Wednesday?" Me: "It'll be next week on Wednesday." Them: "Ohhhh! Thank you so much, it wasn't clear before." If they name a rule after me, I want it to be, "If someone can reasonably interpret a phrase to mean two contradictory things, you have to stop using that phrase if you want clear communication, even if it means being more verbose."

by pxc 2y ago

anon84873628 2y ago

Your pattern of: '<term>' is always <my definition>; doesn't matter <other factor>. Is never going to be true in spoken language. Otherwise we wouldn't be having conversations about confusion and ambiguity in the first place.

pxc 2y ago
At any given time, the lexicon is evolving and some idioms are expanding or on the verge of extinction. Still, there are uses of words and phrases that can reasonably be described as simply wrong at a given time, based on a failure to understand the idiom whose invocation is being attempted. Errors that are sufficiently popular and persistent will eventually just reshape the language, but for a time even an error that is pretty popular or fairly long-lived is still recognizable as an error. By my intuition, I'd say the uses of 'this week' and friends I described as improper qualify handily, not being all that widespread yet. A couple more marginal examples that stand out to me because erroneous uses are much more common: 'let alone' (which is binary and often used with subject and object reversed), the distinction between envy and jealousy. You can take up a radical descriptivist position, e.g., that anything spoken by adult native speakers of normal faculties is never erroneous, or re-scope my assertions by saying that I'm gatekeeping speakers who see such usage as correct from my perceived language community or tradition, whatever, but imo the first is trivial and the second boring. Sometimes specialists misappropriate methodological constraints from their discipline as general ontological or social principles, often discounting an inherent normativity in the way people actually relate to the things those specialists study. I think that's essentially at the heart of the most inflated and controversial uses of concepts like cultural relativism and linguistic descriptivism, and probably applies to nonspecific objections like the one you make above (as opposed to pointing at some specific dialectal variation in the use of such phrases or something like that).

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago

> 'Next Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of the calendar week following the current calendar week; doesn't matter what day of the week it currently is. 'This Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of current week on the calendar— even if that day is in the past. Nope. This is highly contingent on "which day of the week starts a week" conventions. If it is Sunday, then "next Wednesday" does not clearly mean the day 10 days from now ... and which one you lean toward will depend (in part) on "week starts on Monday" or "week starts on Sunday".

pxc 2y ago
Yes, the boundaries of the calendar week is a convention that varies and impacts the description I gave in a straightforward and obvious way, so you can expect complications with different conventions on the boundaries of each week. :) Things are also a bit complicated where I live by the fact that 'this weekend' and 'next weekend' follow the same pattern as I described before, but in a way consistent with calendar weeks beginning on Monday rather than Sunday— even though calendars here conventionally start the week on Sunday and usage of 'this <day of week>' and 'next <day of week>' align with that. Anyhow, the variation you are getting at is already captured in the description I gave: as the calendar (week boundaries) varies, so does the description's meaning. The description is already indexed to a particular calendar (as is the expression, unfortunately implicitly). :p My claim was that the meaning is easy enough to describe, not that the phrase is unambiguous. That a phrase can be used ambiguously doesn't mean that descriptions/definitions/characterizations of its general meaning actually have to be ambiguous or vague themselves. Still yeah, this is a real problem for conversations between people who aren't looking at the same calendar/don't understand a shared convention for week boundaries.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  > Things are also a bit complicated where I live by the fact that 'this weekend' and 'next weekend' follow the same pattern as I described before, but in a way consistent with calendar weeks beginning on Monday rather than Sunday— even though calendars here conventionally start the week on Sunday and usage of 'this <day of week>' and 'next <day of week>' align with that. My sense is that weekend nomenclature is even more confusing. If it is Monday, and I say "next weekend", I'd wager there's a greater proportion of English speakers (at least) who would understand that to mean the two day period that starts in roughly another 4 days. That is: "next weekend" referred to at any time before (possibly) Friday means "the next one to occur", not "the one that is a part of the next calendar week". By contrast, on Friday "next weekend" pretty clearly means the two days that will occur in about 7 days, rather than "this weekend" meaning the two days that start in less than 24 hours.

alistairSH 2y ago

'Next Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of the calendar week following the current calendar week; doesn't matter what day of the week it currently is. 'This Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of current week on the calendar— even if that day is in the past. Is it quirky that this expression doesn't instead mean 'the next Wednesday that will occur'? Yes, definitely. But I don't see how it's difficult to describe what it actually does mean. That's the way it's supposed to be, at least as spoken in the part of Scotland from where my family hails. But the Americans I know seem to get it wrong about half the time. What I haven't figured out is if it's a regional (dialectical) thing, or just certain people being "dense", or simply never having been taught the rule.

caseyohara 2y ago
I’ve lived in the US my whole life and I don’t recall anyone ever getting it wrong. Except this scene in Seinfeld which is obviously Jerry being pedantic for comedic effect. > Sid: Well I'm going down to visit my sister in Virginia next Wednesday, for a week, so I can't park it. > Jerry: This Wednesday? > Sid: No, next Wednesday, week after this Wednesday. > Jerry: But the Wednesday two days from now is the next Wednesday. > Sid: If I meant this Wednesday, I would have said this Wednesday. It's the week after this Wednesday.
SilasX 2y ago
Yeah, I've given up on expecting to know what people will understand "next Wednesday" to mean. I either say "this coming Wednesday" or "next week on Wednesday". Problems solved. Well, usually. I've still had conversations like this: Me: "It'll be next week on Wednesday." Them: "Whoa, slow down there. Do you mean this coming Wednesday, or next week on Wednesday?" Me: "It'll be next week on Wednesday." Them: "Ohhhh! Thank you so much, it wasn't clear before." If they name a rule after me, I want it to be, "If someone can reasonably interpret a phrase to mean two contradictory things, you have to stop using that phrase if you want clear communication, even if it means being more verbose."