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What do you call a phrase like "A few days ago, ..." or "Last Monday, ..."?

For example, "A few days ago, I went shopping" or "Last Monday, I finished reading my book"

I was thinking that it was an appositive, but I'm not sure.

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  • "A few days ago" is a preposition phrase and "last Monday" is a noun phrase. They are both functioning as temporal adjuncts in your examples..
    – BillJ
    Dec 20, 2017 at 8:47
  • Related.
    – tchrist
    Dec 17, 2022 at 22:14

2 Answers 2

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An appositive contains two nouns, so the phrases, which you gave as examples, are not appositives.

I don't think, there is a general term for this kind of phrases.

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I would call them adverbial phrases [of time]; "temporal adjunct" describes their particular function. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverbial_phrase

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  • Categorywise, they are PP and NP respectively.
    – BillJ
    Dec 20, 2017 at 8:50
  • Only if one buys into the notion that "ago" is prepositional.
    – KarlG
    Dec 20, 2017 at 12:50

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