When something happened or will happen, in relation to an explicit or implicit reference time or event.
We ate in the afternoon/during the afternoon/at 2:00/on Friday. 001
Let’s talk at/during lunch. [compare Circumstance#017] 002
For a containing time period or event, during can be used and is unambiguously Time—unlike in, at, and on, which can also be locative.1
I succeeded on the fourth attempt/several occasions. [contrast on occasion, Frequency#003] 004
As meaning ‘when’ (contrast Circumstance#008 under Circumstance):
I will contact you as_soon_as/once it’s ready. 009
The preposition since is ambiguous:
[‘after’] I bought a new car—that was since the breakup. (Time) 010
[‘ever since’] I have loved you since the party where we met. (StartTime) 011
[‘because’] I’ll try not to whistle since I know that gets on your nerves. (Explanation) 012
Simple Time is also used if the reference time is implicit and determined from the discourse:
However, Time↝Interval is used for adpositions whose complement (object) is the amount of time between two reference points:
We left the party after an hour. [an hour after it started] (Time↝Interval) 014
We left the party an hour ago. [an hour before now] (Time↝Interval) 015
The preposition over is also ambiguous:
The deal was negotiated over (the course of) a year. (Duration) 016
He arrived in town over the weekend. (Time↝Duration) 017
See discussion under Duration.
If the scene role is Time, the PP can usually be questioned with When?.
Time is also used for special constructions for expressing clock times, e.g. identifying a time via an offset:
| description | When something happened or will happen, in relation to an explicit or implicit reference time or event. |
|---|---|
| animacy | unspecified |
| parent | Temporal |
| deprecated | False |
| deprecation_message |