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- "Was machen Sie nächsten Sonn…
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I found a pretty good explanation. http://www.nthuleen.com/102/hausaufgaben/explwortstell.html The bottom line - it just has to be accusatve if there's no preposition in front of the name of the day.
For action verbs, such as “to do”, the English simple present is used *only for
• the general present, if the action always or generally occurs in the given situation, as in “The sun rises on Sundays”. Because a unique time, “next Sunday”, is specified here, the general present cannot apply;
• the habitual present, if the action habitually or normally occurs in the given situation, as in “They go to church on Sundays”. Because a unique time, “next Sunday”, is specified here, the habitual present cannot apply;
• the narrative present, if the action is being described as one of a series of events in a story, as in “Solomon Grundy dies on Saturday, and he's buried on Sunday”. Because the listener is specified as the actor here, the narrative present can only apply in a situation where the speaker is coaching the listener. And because a future day, “next Sunday”, is specified, the narrative present can only apply in a multi-day story plot.
So you can say “What do you do next Sunday?”, but only in quite limited circumstances. For example, the speaker could be a coaching a politician about planned campaign tactics; or coaching an accomplice about planned moves in a long con job; or a coaching an actor in a partially improvised play with a multi-day story plot.
999
As in "Was machen Sie am Sonntag?" - I believe so, it would mean "What are you doing on Sunday?". It just isn't correct for this answer which is asking for 'next Sunday'.
2152
I should probably know this by now, but why can't it be : what are they doing next Sunday
I believe without the definite article you must put the "n" at the end. If it were dative, then without the definite article it would be naechstem. http://www.apronus.com/learngerman/adj.htm. So perhaps if you had the article it would be den nächster Sonntag. Can anyone confirm?
1399
It would take a narrow context for your answer to work. Whereas what are you doing can work with no context at all except for there being someone else present.