EKKEHARD KÖNIG Temporal prepositions in English and German: A contrastive study

This paper gives a short overview of the main contrasts in the structure, meanings and uses of temporal prepositions in English and German. It is shown, in particular, that the deictic components of many prepositions and their uses in English (ago, come, since, in, etc.) are absent in their German counterparts. Among the lexical differentiations made in only one language special attention is given to the one between the two prepositions by and until in English, both of which are generally translated by the preposition bis in German. It is shown that this differentiation in English and its absence in German have a number of interesting consequences for the translation of time adverbials from one language into the other.