198 Jarle Ebeling, Signe Oksefjell Ebeling and Hilde Hasselgård
in two languages (e.g. all the way – hele veien) may be associated with differ-
ent degrees of metaphorical potential and thereby different conditions of use.
Furthermore, the same type of expression need not occur with the same frequency
in comparable texts, as was the case with all the expressions studied.
Further cross-linguistic research on multi-word combinations is clearly
needed. The present explorations, based on the fiction component of the ENPC,
only scratch the surface of this vast field of study. Future studies might include
more text types and more types of word combinations to discover more about the
ways in which languages differ, “not just in the means of expression, but also in
the extent to which particular meanings are conventionally expressed in natural
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