“She snow on my clone ’til I change the words”: A construction based analysis of "She X on my Y till I Z"

Abstract

Snowclones, partially filled constructions with extravagant linguistic features, have received more attention in the literature as of late, especially with their rise in text-based online meme culture. The present study looks at the recently coined snowclone “She X on my Y ’til I Z” and analyzes it under approaches in construction grammar. I discuss how this snowclone fits within extant definitions, arguing that although this construction is unselective in lexical categories in the slot fillers, it is still a snowclone as defined in Hartmann and Ungerer (2023) due to its pragmatic functions in online subcultures. I then look at the syntax and semantics of the snowclone, analyzing definitions of the resultative and causative constructions and positing that this snowclone is an instantiation of the causative, using Goldberg and Jackendoff (2004)’s analysis of the resultative as a jumping off point. Finally, I examine the semantics of the different senses of the snowclone, constructing metaphorical links between its central sense and subsenses in the same vein of Goldberg (1995)’s treatment of the ditransitive. The different subsenses are characterized by where the source reference appears, with the central sense being the prototypical idea of a resultative caused by an agent, and its subsenses placing the source reference in either the verbal or constructional subevent.