English Adjectives Last / Next with Time Sequence Meaning

The issues of verbal time reference are studied by a number of Russian and foreign scientists. Although the aspects of structural and semantic features of non-verbal time markers isn’t extensively studied yet. This article is devoted to the issues
of non-verbal time reference. We analyze the English adjectives last / next with time sequence meaning in adverbial adjectivenoun constructions, and also in their primary syntactic function of noun-actant attributive (the secondary time adverbial function).
The study analyses the adjectives according to the relations between starting and referential moments at deep semantic level using the methodology for lexical syntactic reconstruction of time markers, which is its turn based on the standard method of semantic primitive. We found out that the referential moment can be either explicit or implicit. In the latter case it can be restored by the method of semantic reconstruction. The comparative adjectives, showing the state / action change in compare to the previous one, implements the time sequence semantics in relation to the initial state marked with the positive form of the corresponding adjective.