Date:  Wed, 13 Mar 1996 16:38:10 -0400

From:  "Bethany K. Dumas, U of Tennessee" <dumasb[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UTKVX.UTK.EDU>

Subject: Thursday week - this/next Thursday



Thank you for your responses to my query about the origin of "Thursday

[or any other day of the week] week." Most responses have described

regional distribution. I still don't know much about origin. I have heard

the phrase all my life (se TX).



A semantically related set of structures is "this Thursday" vs.

"next Thursday." I have missed more than one social event because of a

misunderstanding about which Thursday was intended by the phrase "next

Thursday." It seems to me that some speakers always contast "this" and

"next," using the phrase "this Thursday" for the next one on the

calendar and the phrase "next Thursday" for the second one coming up on

the calendar, while the rest of us generally don't use the "this"

construction, hence do not read the contrast in the phrase

"next Thursday." "Next Thursday" is the next one coming up, to me.

Is this contrast something I should have learned in se TX?



Thanks,

Bethany

Bethany K. Dumas, J.D., Ph.D.  | Applied Linguistics, Language & Law

Dep't of English, UT, Knoxville | EMAIL: dumasb[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]utk.edu

415 McClung Tower        | (423) 974-6965 | FAX (423) 974-6926

Knoxville, TN 37996-0430    | See Webpage at http://ljp.la.utk.edu