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Structured yet Bounded Temporal Understanding in Large Language Models

Large language models (LLMs) increasingly show strong performance on temporally grounded tasks, such as timeline construction, temporal question answering, and event ordering. However, it remains unclear how their behavior depends on the way time is anchored in language. In this work, we study LLMs' temporal understanding through temporal frames of reference (t-FoRs), contrasting deictic framing (past-present-future) and sequential framing (before-after). Using a large-scale dataset of real-world events from Wikidata and similarity judgement task, we examine how LLMs' outputs vary with temporal distance, interval relations, and event duration. Our results show that LLMs systematically adapt to both t-FoRs, but the resulting similarity patterns differ significantly. Under deictic t-FoR, the similarity judgement scores form graded and asymmetric structures centered on the present, with sharper decline for future events and higher variance in the past. Under sequential t-FoR, similarity becomes strongly negative once events are temporally separated. Temporal judgements are also shaped by interval algebra and duration, with instability concentrated in overlap- and containment-based relations, and duration influencing only past events under deictic t-FoR. Overall, these findings characterize how LLMs organize temporal representation under different reference structures and identify the factors that most strongly shape their temporal understanding.

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