The paper describes the syntactic possibilities of expressing time at the simple-sentence level: non-prepositional and prepositional expressions of time, and time adverbs. In addition to their adverbial role, the above-listed units are described in their attributive role. Their syntagmatic features are determined, as well as their subsenses, normative status, usage frequency, and possibilities of their replacement. Non-prepositional expressions of time reflect the basic nature of cases: the partitiveness of the genitive is characterized by expressing a point in time (indicating that the action denoted by the verb takes up a part of the time denoted by the determiner), the totality of the accusative is characterized by expressing a measure of time (indicating that the action denoted by the verb takes up the whole time denoted by the determiner), and the sociativity of the instrumental is characterized by an overlap between the temporal sense and the sociative sense (sense of 'company'). The prepositional expressions of time have developed in two directions: on the one hand, the semantic fields of certain prepositions have become smaller, i.e. certain time expressions are either no longer a part of the contemporary language norm (okolo, ispred, k, ob, uz, među), or their usage is considered ungrammatical (kod, kroz). On the other hand, there is an observable tendency towards creating new prepositions with the basic (and often the only) role of expressing temporal relations: these are prepositions derived from instrumental nouns, as well as fixed combinations of a preposition proper and an empty noun. Descriptions and different semantic divisions of time adverbs, as well as the possibility of their usage in different sentence roles, testify to a pronounced diversity of adverbs, and at the same time point to the necessity of regarding adverbs as contextually conditioned words. Temporal units, according to the basic principles of localistic case theories, are viewed also in relation to units with spatial meaning, and it is shown that notwithstanding the great similarities in their lingual formation there are differences between these units, which are conditioned principally by the different nature of space and time. By way of comparison with other functional styles of the Croatian language, notably the belles-lettres style, the features of the publicistic style of the first half of the 20th century are singled out.