Kleider machen Leute e Haare machen Menschen: dal proverbio ai suoi snowclones

The aim of this contribution is to analyse the German proverb Kleider machen Leute (English: fine feathers make fine birds) and the partially schematic constructions related to it, the so-called ‘snowclones’, such as [XNom machen Leute] and [Kleider machen XAkk] in a web corpus (deTenTen20). For the purposes of the present study, we will adopt a corpus-based approach, in the sense that specific forms of the proverb will be studied by analysing their formal variants and semantic and pragmatic features. The analysis lies at the intersection between traditional phraseology/paremiology studies and Construction Grammar.