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Is it correct to say:

  1. We shall discuss it in our today's meeting.

Or would it be more correct to say something longer like:

  1. We shall discuss it in our meeting that is scheduled for today.

ADDED: There is now also a related thread that is attempting to address the grammaticality of the expression "our today's meeting": Why is “our today's meeting” wrong? -- Though, personally (F.E.), I haven't found their arguments for proving that it is ungrammatical to be convincing.

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Shakir
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    "Ours" seems to be redundant. It simply could be "We shall discuss it in today's meeting." – Eilia Jun 10 '15 at 11:57
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    Where do you get the idea that saying something longer will make it more correct? – Robusto Jun 10 '15 at 12:05
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    and the shortest is TBD (to be discussed) : ) – Misti Jun 10 '15 at 12:24
  • Interesting. We can quite easily "stack" possessives in other contexts (My husband''s boss's wife gave us her cook's tour of the grounds...), but it doesn't seem to work at all well to follow that up with ...when we were invited to their this year's workers' garden party. Where either of *their* or *this year's* would be fine on its own, but they just don't sit well together. – FumbleFingers Jun 10 '15 at 12:40
  • Does today pertain to you, or the meeting? That messes up things, and that's why the phrasing is bad. HTH. Both our and today modify meeting. "The newspaper, in its yesterday's issue, ..." may not sound odd at all, but it does rankle the careful reader. – Kris Jun 10 '15 at 13:29
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    "We shall discuss it in our meeting today" has all it takes and works fine. – Kris Jun 10 '15 at 13:34
  • surely this belongs on the ELL site. i would hold that no native speaker of english has ever felt an urge to say "our today's meeting." though most of us cannot explain why that's wrong, it is to all of our ears obviously wrong. because this question asks whether it's correct and not for an explanation, the OP is interested in learning the english language, not in analyzing it. – abcd Jun 10 '15 at 16:01
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    +1, it seems to be a good question! :) – F.E. Jun 10 '15 at 18:56
  • @dbliss actually, i'm also interested in breaking it down and analyzing the structure. This was actually said by my co-worker from India and it didn't seem right. – Shakir Jun 11 '15 at 06:28
  • @Robusto Sometimes longer sentences are easier to understand to non-native speakers than shorter sentences that are more formal or advanced so as to say. I remember the french word for What as is Qu'est que used over Que itself. – Shakir Jun 11 '15 at 06:33
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    @dbliss No, this is a site for linguists, so this question is fine, because it requires some proper grammatical analysis of the complex nature of noun phrases. – Araucaria - Him Jun 11 '15 at 09:36
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    @Shakir: Good point. They say dot the i's and cross the t's. But with respect to the French "what", since I attended university in France, I can say that "Qu'est-ce que" is the same as "Que" in a question, but changes the construction. It doesn't add any detail to the sentence. – Sankarane Jun 11 '15 at 10:00
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    As Kris says, ' ... in our meeting today' is idiomatic. There are examples on the internet of 'in our Monday (etc) meeting'; I doubt that anyone would call these unacceptable. This argues for the grammaticality of 'in our today meeting' (AHDEL has 'today issues'; 'the today generation', but does not consider these attributive noun usages). The use of Saxon genitive after possessive determiner to address the same referent, like that of possessive determiner after possessive determiner, is prohibited.... – Edwin Ashworth Jun 13 '15 at 14:45
  • See the Wikipedia article (the 'Combinations of Determiners' section). – Edwin Ashworth Jun 13 '15 at 14:47

1 Answers1

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Your first example "We will discuss it in our today's meeting." is incorrect because today is not ours. You could say "our meeting" or "today's meeting", or "our meeting today".

Your second example "We will discuss it at our meeting that is scheduled for today." is OK grammatically, but it's unnecessarily wordy. Try one of these succinct constructions:

  • We will discuss it in our meeting today.

Or

  • We will discuss it today in our meeting.
Brian Hitchcock
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  • Or "in our meeting today." – Robusto Jun 10 '15 at 12:04
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    Ok, but this a site for linguists, what's the reason the OP's example's wrong? :) – Araucaria - Him Jun 11 '15 at 09:00
  • @BrianHitchcock: You added that well after I commented. Look at your revision history. – Robusto Jun 12 '15 at 09:36
  • I was driving my uncle's car..." Two possessives there, a perfectly grammatical sentence. One could argue that there is more than one meeting being held simultaneously, which is possible in a very large organisation, are you attending XXX's today's meeting or mine? – Mari-Lou A Jun 13 '15 at 05:40
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    @Mari-Lou A: Even in such a case, nobody's attending "XXX's today's meeting". They might attend "XXX's meeting today" or "my meeting today". But surely you understand that "my uncle's (cousin's (mother-in-law's (babysitter's))) car" is different grammatically from "my today's (department's (auditors')) meeting". (Oh, and I fixed the typo; thank you.) – Brian Hitchcock Jun 13 '15 at 11:21
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    @Mari-LouA It's the difference between "[my uncle]'s car" and "an [Obama's fan]" :) – Araucaria - Him Jun 13 '15 at 13:37
  • I was pointing out that your explanation in your post has a leak. You claim "our today's meeting" is wrong because the sentence has two possessives, well so does my example, "my [possessive determiner] uncle's [genetive] car". BTW the upvote is mine.... – Mari-Lou A Jun 13 '15 at 19:41
  • Okay, i'm bad at explaining it. But my meeting is on my today —if you want to have your own meeting, you'd better have it on somebody else's today. – Brian Hitchcock Jun 14 '15 at 07:38