Formal and conceptual aspects of linguistic hypertext

The article provides complex analysis of linguistic hypertext, namely commentaries in English or Russian to English literary texts. Linguistic hypertext is regarded as means of overcoming linguistic and extralinguistic communicative failures produced on various text levels. Effective comprehension of a text requires possession of linguistic and extralinguistic contexts which accounts for distinguishing formal and conceptual aspects of linguistic hypertext. Units of formal aspect are meant to bridge phonological, morphological, lexical-phraseological, syntactical and stylistic gaps provoked by linguistic discrepancies. Conceptual aspect includes units of literary and cultural background information which are supposed to neutralize differences in cultural worldviews. The number of commentary units related to the aspects is determined by such factors as address of both literary text and hypertext itself, objectives of a commentator and the manner of presenting information in a commentary. The analysis presented in the article enables to determine levels and aspects of a text most likely to produce communicative failures when reading a literary text.