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I'm a linguistic student and I'm looking for a reliable source (Scientific paper, dictionary or even reliable internet website) which lists time adverbs & frequency adverbs in English.

Anyone can think of something?

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  • They're usually not single words, but phrases. And there's no final list because the constructions in the phrases have trillions of possible combinations (conservatively speaking).
    – jlawler
    Jun 17, 2016 at 0:29
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    Do you mean specifically those lexemes that are categorised as 'adverbs' and function as heads of temporal adjuncts (adverbials) (e.g. "early/recently/soon/formerly" etc.), or a list of temporal adjuncts of any word-category (like the pronoun "yesterday"/the prep "before"/the NP "last week"/the adverb "currently" etc.)? A comprehensive list of the latter would be impossible since the possibilities are endless.The former wouldn't be too difficult to plot. Ditto, for frequency expressions
    – BillJ
    Jun 17, 2016 at 9:55
  • Hi, Thanks for the answers. I'm not looking for a final list. I understand there are endless possibilities. I'm looking for a list that contains the most common time adverbs & frequency adverbs. I understand I (or anyone else) can easily compose such list, but I need it for a paper i'm writing for the University, so I'm looking for a reliable source.
    – lior_
    Jun 18, 2016 at 13:47

2 Answers 2

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I wonder if Beth Levin's English Verb Classes and Alternations (1993)would have something in its bibliography that you can use? I found the book hard to find but a copy is floating around online somewhere.

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You can see Quirk et al. "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (General Grammar)". Chapter 8 is "The semantics and grammar of adverbials", and I believe this is one of the things you would need. One of the semantic roles of the adverbials is "time" (such as the adverb "last" in the adverbial "last week"). I think you will find what you are looking for in this book.

There are many more things within this book as well (it's almost 1800 pages!) and I highly recommend it.

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