ABSTRACT
This chapter presents evidence of structural primings found in the datasets of the items cultivated, flame and grew. Structural primings are expressed through colligation. As the quantitative findings show colligation to be another distinguishing feature of metaphoric language in comparison to non-metaphoric language, the findings support another branch of the Lexical Priming theory. The chapter focuses on conventional uses of metaphor and how repetitive use establishes patterns in the use of metaphoric language. The research so far argues that specific semantic differences in the lexis prime to recognise metaphoric language. Returning to the top ten most frequent collocates, highly and mind are the only items specific to the metaphoric data. However, the cluster analysis also uncovered some colligations as well as supporting the earlier semantic association and collocation analyses. The analysis begins by exploring the top ten most frequent collocates.
