A Corpus Analysis of (The) Last/Next + Temporal Nouns

Many reference grammars cover the use of last and next, but none pays overt attention to when and why those words combine with ø or the before temporal nouns; for example, (a) I came to Boston ølast year and (b) Iʹve been in Boston for the last year. Based on three theoretical notions of predicated time, extensivity, and the null article, and a corpus analysis of the tokens of (the) last/next from the Brown Corpus, the 1996 LA Times Corpus, and the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English, this article presents a detailed account of when the determiners last and next combine with null or the; why last/next followed by singular temporal nouns occur with null, as in (a), or with the, as in (b); and why only singular temporal nouns, but not plural temporal nouns or non-temporal nouns, can combine with null + last/next.