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  • Next ambiguity

    From Athel Cornish-Bowden@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jul 21 18:11:55 2024
    I'm wondering how common ambiguity in the word "next" is. My first
    wife, when I was driving and she was giving directions, would say, for
    example, "take the next right", which we would understand differently;
    for me the next right would mean right at the intersection we are just
    coming to. For her it meant the one after it. There was a similar
    ambiguity for weeks. If I say "next week" I mean the week that starts
    tomorrow, Monday 22nd July: for her it would mean the week that starts
    on the 29th.

    In case it's relevant, I mention that my ex-wife is from California,
    one of the few native adult Californians that I ever came across when I
    lived in California.


    --
    Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly
    in England until 1987.

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  • From Antonio Marques@21:1/5 to Athel Cornish-Bowden on Sun Jul 21 17:23:14 2024
    Athel Cornish-Bowden <[email protected]> wrote:
    I'm wondering how common ambiguity in the word "next" is. My first
    wife, when I was driving and she was giving directions, would say, for example, "take the next right", which we would understand differently;
    for me the next right would mean right at the intersection we are just
    coming to. For her it meant the one after it. There was a similar
    ambiguity for weeks. If I say "next week" I mean the week that starts tomorrow, Monday 22nd July: for her it would mean the week that starts
    on the 29th.

    In case it's relevant, I mention that my ex-wife is from California,
    one of the few native adult Californians that I ever came across when I
    lived in California.


    I don't think this is exclusive to english. My consensus is that 'next' has
    to refer to something else than 'this', but I note it hasn't been adopted
    by everyone.

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  • From Aidan Kehoe@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jul 21 19:50:56 2024
    Ar an chéad lá is fiche de mí Iúil, scríobh Athel Cornish-Bowden:

    I'm wondering how common ambiguity in the word "next" is. My first wife, when I
    was driving and she was giving directions, would say, for example, "take the next right", which we would understand differently; for me the next right would
    mean right at the intersection we are just coming to. For her it meant the one
    after it. There was a similar ambiguity for weeks. If I say "next week" I mean
    the week that starts tomorrow, Monday 22nd July: for her it would mean the week
    that starts on the 29th.

    In case it's relevant, I mention that my ex-wife is from California, one of the
    few native adult Californians that I ever came across when I lived in California.

    I think she was just wrong. “This right” vs “next right” is a useful distinction to have, and she didn’t have it. This ignores the what-is-the-first-day-of-the-week other ambiguity of your second example.

    An awkward thing to look into for evidence, even in these days of large corpora.

    --
    ‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
    How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
    (C. Moore)

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