Sth I've noticed about articles

Question

I've noticed that there's no articles before such expressions as 'last night's (party ), next Saturday's (match), yesterday's (meeting), tomorrow's (event) an so on. Normally, I would go for 'the' in front of them because they describe some specific occurance but somehow it is omitted. Is it a rule that I haven't read about but just figured out empirically?

Edit: Fixed "party" to make it stop generating a system icon. CJ

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

A possessive is a determiner. Articles are determiners.
The possessive can be the possessive pronouns, or possessive form of nouns.
We don't put two determiners before one noun; one is enough.

Yesterday's meeting was too long.
The meeting we had yesterday was too long.

Gregor bought a new blue car.
Gregor's new car is blue.
His new car is blue.

Tomasz Klepinowski · Answer

It seems almost clear to me now. However, I found the following sentence in an Oxford book: 'Tourism remains one of the world's great growth industries.'

Why are there both, the definite article and the possessive form of a noun?

AlpheccaStars · Answer

'Tourism remains one of [the world]'s great growth industries.
Tourism remains one of the great growth industries of the world.

"The" modifies "world," not "industries."

CalifJim · Answer

Tomasz KlepinowskiI've noticed that there's no articles before such expressions as 'last night's (party ), next Saturday's (match), yesterday's (meeting), tomorrow's (event) an so on. Normally, I would go for 'the' in front of them because they describe some specific occurrence ...

I can't tell whether you want "the" to go with "night", "Saturday", "yesterday", etc., or with "party", "match", "meeting", etc. You can't have the latter in English, if that's what you're trying to do. (the ... party; the ... match, ...)

You can attach an article to the possessive noun itself, however. Though the following is a rather labored usage, it's possible:

During the conference we had several parties, but on the last night of the conference we had a really big party. The last night's party was the biggest and best. (the party on the last night) the for 'party' pops up only in the paraphrase.

None of the adverbs of time like "today", "tomorrow", and "yesterday" take an article in their normal usage (We did that yesterday, not We did that the yesterday), so there's no way to use "the today's lesson", "a tomorrow's task", or "the yesterday's results", or anything like those.

CJ

Sth I've noticed about articles

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