Recurrent word-combinations in contrast 195
However, some uses of the first time seem to be more semantically bleached than
others; in (31), for example, it refers more generally to a past event (i.e. without the
uniqueness implied by a first occasion), which is also reflected in the Norwegian
translation.
(31) She did n’t listen to you at all the first time. (TH1)
Hun hørte ikke på deg i stad i det hele tatt. (TH1T)
Lit: ‘She listened not to you before at all’
As indicated by the extended patterns of a long time, this expression usually func-
tions as (part of ) an adverbial, but it also has some nominal uses, e.g. as part of the
take a long time pattern or as subject, as shown in (32).
(32) A long time had passed since the war, but Tora knew that she was a part of it.
(HW1T)
Det var lenge siden krigen, men Tora visste at hun var en del av den. (HW1)
Lit.: ‘It was long since the war, but Tora knew...’
Note, however, that the subject of the English sentence in (32) corresponds to an
adverbial expression in the Norwegian source. This may thus be an example of
the versatility of subjects in English as regards their ability to encode for instance
temporal and spatial relations, which are more typically encoded as adverbi-
als in German, according to König & Gast (2007: 110), and presumably also in
Norwegian.
The differences in frequency between translations and originals shown in
Table 9 may suggest an influence from the source language, suggesting that tem-
poral expressions are more common in Norwegian than in English. Turning to the
lists of recurrent 3-word combinations in Norwegian, however, we find only one
temporal expression occurring among the top 25 in Norwegian originals: av og
til (‘occasionally’; rank 8, 87 occurrences), and two more among the top 100: for
første gang^24 (‘for the first time’; rank 46, 40 occurrences), and i løpet av (‘in the
course of ’; rank 64, 36 occurrences). The frequency of for første gang, though cor-
responding to an English 4-word combination, probably contributes to boosting
the frequency of the first time in English translations.
If Table 9 reveals a difference in the frequency of temporal expressions
between English and Norwegian, the source of the difference clearly cannot be
found in Norwegian 3-word combinations. As shown in Table 11, the recurrent
Norwegian correspondences of the English temporal 3-grams tend to be simplexes
or two-word combinations.
- The Nynorsk variants første/fyrste gong are included in all figures for første gang.