1. A method comprising: identifying a time period to be described linguistically in an output text; identifying a communicative context for the output text; determining one or more temporal reference frames that are applicable to the time period and a domain defined by the communicative context; and generating a phrase specification that linguistically describes the time period based on the descriptor that is defined by a temporal reference frame of the one or more temporal reference frames, wherein the descriptor specifies a time window that is inclusive of at least a portion of the time period to be described linguistically.