Zero article before 'next season'

Question

A search engine tells me that the expression "next season" without an article before it is much more common than the expression "the next season" (for example, "&lt;soccer team&gt; have announced an increase on ticket prices for next season"). My question is, why there is no article before "next season"? "Season" is singular and countable, right? Thank you in advance.

Avangi · Accepted Answer

I understand "next season" to be an idiom which functions as an adverb. (Similar to "next year"/"next time")

"We'll do better next season." This works like, "We'll do better later." (When?)
In this particular example, "the next season" cannot be substituted.

At the beginning of a sentence, it seems to be optional:
[The] next season, they did better. (During the next season) These seem to be casual.

As part of a prepositional phrase, "the" is optional:
They were getting ready for [the] next season.

Edit. It seems to make a difference when talking about a future event:
They did better the next season. "The" works better in the past tense.

Anonymous"Season" is singular and countable, right?

Right.

As I think through more examples, "the" is generally optional, and only a few special cases specifically require its use or omission.

Afraid I haven't been much help.

CalifJim · Answer

AnonymousMy question is, why there is no article before "next season"?

Because, as Avangi said, it's an adverbial expression used with present time.

next season measures time from now, i.e., from the time of utterance.

the next season measures time from some other reference point which we can infer from the context.

In 2005 they did very well. In the next season they did even better.
We did poorly this season, but we'll do better next season.

Other divisions of time (week, month, year) work the same way.

(Given: This month is April.) Next month is May.
The next month after November is December.

I can pay you next week.
I borrowed $500 from him several months ago, and I paid him back the next week.
I can't pay you next week, but I will definitely be able to pay you the next week after that.

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

"The soccer team announced an increase in ticket prices for next season." is correct. This is the sentence you'd hear in real life regarding a soccer team and next season's ticket prices.

"The soccer team announced an increase in ticket prices for the next season." can also be correct. You might see this, for example, in literature, in a story about a soccer team.

There are myriad situations with articles, and there are no rules that can cover all of them. You just have to learn them by experience, a daunting task for a non-native speaker. However there is a rule of sorts for articles that I myself have devised for non-native speakers: when in doubt about an article, put the article in, even if you make a grammatical error, because having an extraneous article sounds much less bad than leaving one out. And English, especially American-style English, is an article-heavy language (Americans just love their articles), so the odds are in your favor if you put the article in.

For example, if you said, "Did you hear? The team is raising ticket prices for the next season." This is not quite right because there shouldn't be an article before "next," but it doesn't sound really bad. And it at least shows you're familiar with the fact that English is an article-heavy language.

However, if you said, "Our team is favored to win championship this season.", leaving the article out before "championship," that sounds just terrible.

Zero article before 'next season'

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