Types of explanatory relations in constructions with non-predicative parentheticals

The aim of the study is to develop a classification of explanatory relations in constructions with parentheticals based on logical relations. The research is conducted on the material of Russian literary works of the 19th-20th centuries. Contextual and component analyses were used in the development of the classification. The study involves a comparison of explanatory relations with coordinative and subordinative ones. The specificity of explanation is described as a subject-expressive and subject-oriented form of syntax, serving a metacommunicative function. Explanatory relations are defined as relations that arise between two components (the explained and the explaining) performing the same syntactic function but not connected by coordinating or subordinating conjunctions and not entering into enumeration relations with each other. Based on the analysis of scientific literature and language material, a classification of explanatory relations in constructions with parentheticals was developed. This classification is grounded in correlating the extensions of concepts of the explaining and the explained components. The extension of a concept is viewed as a scale, at one end of which pronouns are located as non-specific words performing an indicative function, with their potential extension approaching infinity; at the other end of this scale are proper nouns, another type of non-specific words, whose function is the unique naming of an object, and their conceptual volume tends towards unity. Content words occupy the intermediate position. Three main types of explanatory relations in constructions with parentheticals are identified: (1) specification (narrowing the extension of the concept when moving from the specified to the specifying); (2) generalization (expanding the extension of the concept); (3) identification (equating the extensions of the concepts). Specification most closely corresponds to the logic of the progressive development of the text: from general to specific, from less information to more. Generalization achieves progressive development of the text through the exchange of characteristics between an element and a set: by endowing the set with the properties of the referent or by endowing the referent with the properties of the set. Identification violates the logic of the progressive development of the text; the informational value of identification is determined by its metalinguistic function, that is, by ensuring the interaction of various signifiers caused by differences in languages, sociolects, idiolects or constitutions. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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