The peculiarities of the functioning of the text connector "mezhdu prochim" in the dialogical text

The text connector "mezhdu prochim" ("by the way") belongs to the group of connectors which add the so-called optional comment. Functioning of the text connector "mezhdu prochim" in the monologue and in the dialogue is considerably different. It is connected with the fact that the monologue and the dialogue differ in syntactical mechanisms of text building, pragmatics, and also in the set of extra-linguistic factors which condition their existence. In our work we do not make any distinction between "natural" and "fiction" dialogue, as for our research this difference is not relevant. We found four groups of usage of the text connector "mezhdu prochim" in the dialogue. 1. Adding of "unimportant" information. The commenting sentence is scarcely connected with the left context: it introduces the information either based on facts described in the "far" left context or the information connected with the left context only relatively, associatively. The comment is considered by the speaker as a report of subjectively unimportant information. 2. Adding of "important" information. While adding a comment containing important (from the speaker's point of view) information the subjective importance of the information is emphasized by the following means: the name of an authoritative person or organization, statement of a special status, belonging to a special class, expressively marked word. 3. Signal (inchoative) function. This function is often accompanied by the words like "vspomnil" ("remembered"), "zabyl skazat'" ("forgot to say"), "poka ne zabyl" ("before I forget"), "khlopnul sebya po lbu" ("slapped the forehead"), "nachal" ("began") or something similar. The basic function of the connector is not so much adding of the information, as drawing attention to it. 4. Didactic, instructive comment. The comment with a shade of an edifying quality, instructiveness or even reproach usually contains a generalizing statement; the link between the comment and the left context is constructed by the combination of the general and specific notions. In the left context there is information which becomes a base for some instructive generalization in the comment. Thereby, the text connector "mezhdu prochim" is able to perform four specific functions in the dialogical text: adding of subjectively important/unimportant information, signal of the new theme and adding of the didactic, instructive comment. In the first case the comment often correlates with "forgotten" information from the "far" left context; in the second case it relates to the information from the "closest" left context and rests upon the supplemental lexical means; in the third case there is no comment per se, the statement is needed to attract the attention of a listener/reader; in the fourth case the comment is often based on generalization.

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