Re: I'm trying to think of a word...

Sylvia Sotomayor wrote:

> ...a technical term for discussing time phrases. There is a
> technical term for phrases discussing place, namely locatives.
> Is there a term to discuss time phrases, like 'once' or 'later'
> or 'until', etc. I don't want to use the words tense or aspect
> in discussing these, because they really are structured more
> like locative phrases. Maybe "temporal phrases"?
Hm. Not many replies to this post.

There is something called temporal phases. Or rather "phasal
adverbs" or "grammaticalized expressions of phasal meaning"
(which I was supposed to write my MA-thesis on).

Phasal expressions indicate that a state does or does not
continue or that it has or has not come into existence. In
English this is expressed by the adverbials 'still', 'no
longer', 'already' and 'not yet'.

Not exactly what you're after, but perhaps something to work
from. You could expand the meaning of temporal *phases* to mean
what your after.

OTOH, I think "temporal phRases" is a fitting term. I'd
probably go for that one.

||| daniel

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