Many target domains, however, cannot be thoroughly investigated by searching a corpus for collocates of target lexemes because not all target language occurs near or next to source domain triggers. Thus, the ease with which metaphorical structure can be exposed has to do with the relationship between source-domain language and the structural character of the target domain.

Instead of relying on pre-specified semantic fields in the collection of candidate metaphor triggers, I use corpus collocation patterns to gather candidate triggers.