[bonanova]

Suppose it's Sunday April 7. Someone says something will happen next Friday.

Invariably they feel they are referring to Friday April 19, and not to Friday April 12.

Yet the dictionary makes it clear that next Friday is April 12.

Dictionary says this of next:

1. immediately following in time or order
2. nearest in space or position;
3. immediately adjoining without intervening space
4. at the time or occasion immediately following
   
   

In other words, it's the superlative of near: near, nearer, nearest or next.

Thus we use it to express the absence of intervening objects or events:

1. Next in line.
2. Next door.
3. Next year.
4. Our next President.
5. In the next room.
6. Next, he addressed the problem of health care.

People have no problem using next correctly in any of the listed case above.

Only, it seems, when next is applied to a day does it become common to insert an intervening object. Next Friday is taken to mean Friday after next. Amazing! If you recursively apply that definition, you get, in turn, Friday after Friday after next, then Friday after Friday after Friday after next ... and so on. In other words, Next Friday, if it's even defined, will never come! It's like "Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I love you Tomorrow, you're always a day away." Next Friday is always [at least] a week away!

Suppose it's Sunday April 7th. If next Friday means April 19, then it's not the Friday that immediately follows in time, as the definition of next says it should. Rather, there is an intervening Friday. What do we call that Friday? Well, most would call it This Friday.

What's that all about, and why is "Next Friday" so ambiguous, when next week or next month or next year is not?

I have a theory that I'll share, after some cracks have been taken at this.

Edit: see post 7.

Edited April 3, 2010 by bonanova
Add pointer to post 7

[Guest]

Very interesting...It has come to mind before how saying next friday tends to refer to the friday after the true "next friday" but never really thought about it in depth to that extent. I guess since most people refer to the closest friday as "this friday" they just use "next friday" to refer to the following week.

[bonanova]

Very interesting...It has come to mind before how saying next friday tends to refer to the friday after the true "next friday" but never really thought about it in depth to that extent. I guess since most people refer to the closest friday as "this friday" they just use "next friday" to refer to the following week.

Thinking more specifically:

It seems strange that "next month" can belong to "this year," "next week" can belong to "this month,"

but "next Friday" cannot belong to "this week."

Can you think of a logical reason why this usage might have come into existence only for days?

That is, a reason that would not lead to next week meaning week after next?

[Guest]

I do think that the "this" "next" thing does play a part. However, at least in my own experience, if it were Sunday, I would call the coming Friday "next Friday." As we get to Wednesday or Thursday, and Friday becomes "the Day after Tomorrow" and "Tomorrow," respectively, then they gain those terms instead of "next Friday" (or maybe it simply becomes "Friday" on Wednesday). At that point, "next Friday" will refer to the following Friday instead of the closer one. I'm afraid I can't tell you the specific point at which they make the transition.

Since Fridays occur once every seven days (amazingly enough ), any reference to Friday is a somewhat relative term compared to the current day of the week. Since our interest is going to be inherently aimed toward the immediate future more so than longer term, any reference to days of the week will probably be considered in terms of their relation to "now" by default. Thus, anyone talking about "Friday" or "This Friday" will be understood to mean the nearest Friday to the current date. Should we want to talk about Friday in the following week, we need to clarify that intent and since the "next" is implicit when we talk about the nearest Friday, when we say "Next Friday," that redundancy implies that we are not talking about the coming Friday, but the one further in the future than that.

This probably in part derives from the fact that we don't have a systematic method for enumerating the nearness of objects: Nearest, [next nearest]*, farthest. If we had a words that meant "first nearest," "second nearest," etc., we probably wouldn't have this sort of weird corner case in the language.

I wonder if this is an English phenomenon or whether this same sort of thing crops up in other languages too?

* apply recursively as needed

[bonanova]

dawh,

Yeah, my idea is very close to what you said.

But I think there is a specific observation that nails the ambiguity precisely to this case and not to next door, next year, next subject, next room, or next anything else.

[Guest]

I wonder if this is an English phenomenon or whether this same sort of thing crops up in other languages too?

I believe it is some form of English "corruption"

What I'm saying is (at least, at my school) it seems as if "this friday" is a shortened way of saying "this coming friday" and "next friday" is short for "friday, next week"

[bonanova]

Days are intrinsically different from weeks, months and years.

Why? Except for yesterday, today and tomorrow, they have names.

"Next" [which is synonymous with nearest] needs a reference point.

The reference point is "this."

We rarely say this day or next day, although it would have no ambiguity; we say today and tomorrow.

But we say this week and next week, this month and next month [altho months have names also], this year and next year.

In all these cases, the "this" period of time contains the present moment.

Thus, in all these cases, the "next" period of time is the immediately following one.

However, if it's Sunday and we say "this Friday", the "this" period of time does not contain the present moment.

The "this" period of time is in the future - 5 days, in this case.

Thus, "next Friday" can't be the Friday that immediately follows the present moment,

it's the Friday that immediately follows a future event.

The same problem can occur with months, because they also have names.

But months don't have terms like today and tomorrow. There's no "tomonth" for example.

So while if it's April 2010, then "next May" might be taken to mean May 2011,

"next month" is unambiguously May 2010 - the month immediately following "this month."