aikaprepositiot

Aikaprepositiot is a term used in linguistic typology to describe adpositions that encode temporal relationships between events or time expressions. The category encompasses both prepositions and postpositions and includes expressions that answer questions of time such as when, for how long, or how often.

Across languages, aikaprepositiot contribute semantic roles: point in time (at 5 o'clock, on Monday), duration (for two days, during the festival), starting points and ending points (since 2010, until next year), or frequency (twice a week).

In Finnish context, time is often expressed by case markings and time adverbs rather than separate temporal adpositions. "Kello kahdeksalta" uses the elative case of "kello" to mean at eight o'clock, not a dedicated time preposition. As a result, the traditional category of aikaprepositiot is more commonly discussed in languages with robust prepositional systems (such as English or German) than in standard Finnish grammar.

In linguistic description, scholars classify and compare aikaprepositiot by their semantic scope, their syntactic position, and their interaction with aspect and tense. Learners encountering languages with explicit time prepositions will study typical examples and usage patterns to convey precise temporal meaning.

See also: time expression, adposition, Finnish grammar.