A comparison study of the JBXDMY construction inAmerican and British English

Abstract: The "Just Because X Doesn't Mean Y" (JBXDMY) construction initially emerged in the1850s as a spoken expression, typically employed to convey a negative implication to theinterlocutor. This syntactic structure is prevalent in both British and American English, withthe most frequently observed variant in the British corpora being "Just Because X doesn'tmean Y," and in the American corpora, "X That doesn't mean Y." The present studyscrutinized samples from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and theBritish National Corpus (BNC) to discern disparities in the application and frequency ofvarious instances of this construction.In order to examine the structure of the clause comprehensively, the analysis encompassed itsconstituent elements. This investigation led to the delineation of the JBXDMY construction asfollows: "Just because X" operates as a subordinating clause, functioning as a clausal verbphrase adverbial. Concurrently, "Doesn't mean" constitutes a superordinate clause,encompassing the "Y" element, which is preceded by a word that may or may not be ellipted.This preceding word serves as the complementizer "that," assuming the role of a direct objectfor the verb phrase "doesn't mean Y."