Perception of time is a fundamental part of the perception of the world. However, time can be perceived only through the medium of language. The distinctive function of language determines that every language has lexical and/or grammatical means for expressing time. Still, the perception of time is more complex than was previously assumed: research of recent decades has shown that at different stages of human development time was perceived differently. This paper focuses on two main models of time perception – cyclical and linear – and their linguistic realizations. The aim of the study is to explore adverbs of time in German as lexical means of expressing time. It is hypothesized that adverbs of time not only define an activity or process in time, but also point to underlying models of time perception. The findings suggest that durative and iterative German adverbs of time present time as a recurrent and infinite category (the cyclical model of time), whereas relative adverbs present time as an uninterrupted line stretching from the past through the present to the future (the linear model of time).