next year vs the next year

我在討論區提出了一條問題:

Cambridge Dictionaries Online has provided examples on the word "next".

Why is "the" omitted in

"What do you think you'll be doing this time next year?"
while next day is preceded by "the" in

"We had a dreadful argument, but he phoned me the next day (= the day after) to apologize."
Do we include "the" before "next"?

有人答了我:

In the first sentence "next" refers to a specific year. An alternate for the first sentence might be:

"What do you think you'll be doing this time in 2015?"

In the second sentence "the next" refers to "the following." An alternate for the second sentence might be:

"We had a dreadful argument, but he phoned me the following day to apologize."

similar to:

"The train was full, so we boarded the next train."

不過其他網友說這條問題已問過,指引我去看另一條別人問過的問題:

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I would like to start planning for next year.
In the above sentence, there is no definite article before the words next year. Should it be present, as in the following sentence which sounds far less natural to me?

I would like to start planning for the next year.
Or, is it more proper to leave it out as in the first sentence? What is the reasoning behind the correct usage in this context?

我覺得最好的答案是:

Next in this usage is better regarded as a determiner rather than as an adjective. ( http://simple.wiktionary.org/wiki/next ) (compare last year, this year). The use of another definite determiner (the) is thus superfluous. However, this does not apply with following, present, and previous, where the definite article is needed to pre-modify:

I wanted to start planning for the following year.

I'd guess that following etc are behaving more like adjectives, so there needs to be a definite determiner (the definite article) added. Next grades into adjectivalness, so the definite article is an option. With "this", the adjectival component does not exist, so we can't say for the this year.

但另外一個答案都好有趣:

In your particular example, I would say that next year refers to 2013, while the next year refers to the twelve-month period ending at the end of November 2013. (Not much difference in practice, but more if you use the phrase in February). I can't explain the difference, but I'm sure it's there; perhaps it's just idiomatic.

無論如何,next既是adjective,也是determiner.這一點最關鍵.

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/167147/the-next-day-or-next-day