184 Jarle Ebeling, Signe Oksefjell Ebeling and Hilde Hasselgård
det hele tatt in the 51 English originals, we find at all (29), Ø (10), and nine other
correspondences where even is the most frequent with three occurrences.^10 It is a
bit puzzling that zero correspondences should constitute such a large proportion
of the correspondences for i det hele tatt and not for i det minste.
(4) “Leter De i det hele tatt etter andre?” (KA1)
“Are you looking for others at all?” (KA1T)
(5) Jeg kan ikke huske at jeg i det hele tatt tok på henne, og hun rørte ved meg
bare to ganger. (FC1)
Lit.: ‘I can’t remember that I at all touched her, ...’
I can’t remember Ø putting a hand on her, and she touched me only twice.
(FC1T)
(6) Det er merkelig at noe som smaker så vondt i det hele tatt kan lukte så godt.
(LSC1)
It’s odd that something that tastes so bad on the whole can smell so good.
(LSC1T)
The corpus data show that English has congruent combinations at its disposal,
e.g. at the very least and on the whole.^11 However, these are not frequently used as
correspondences of the Norwegian combinations in the ENPC.
If we disregard the zero correspondences for the moment, it can be concluded
that the two Norwegian combinations we have investigated correspond strongly
to at least and at all respectively. Next we shall see if the strong tie between these
correspondences holds the other way as well by looking up at least and at all in
the English original texts and the English translations.Table 3. Number of occurrences of at least and at all in the corpus
Comb. Eng. orig. Eng. tran.
at least 95 122
at all 104 88What we can note right away is that at least and at all are much more frequent than
the Norwegian combinations. Starting with at least, which occurs 95 times in the
English original texts and 122 times in the translations, its main correspondences- The others are in the first place (2), altogether (1), any (1), ever (1), never (1), on the whole
(1), only (1) and whatever (1). - We follow Johansson (2007: 23ff.) in defining a congruent correspondence as an overt cor-
respondence that belongs to the same grammatical category (i.e. syntactically congruent) as its
translation or source.