Intertextual Units, Realias, and Lacunas in Linguistic Discourse: Criteria for Delimitation and Contrastive Analysis in Uzbek Literature

This study investigates the theoretical and empirical delimitation between intertextual units, cultural realias, and intercultural lacunas within linguistic and translation discourse. While all three categories represent manifestations of culture-bound non-equivalence, they stem from divergent semiotic, cognitive, and communicative mechanisms. Grounded in text linguistics, cognitive frame semantics, and T.E. Litvinenko’s operational criteria, this paper presents a comparative framework that differentiates vertical intertextual referencing from ethnographic denotation (realias) and cognitive-systemic conceptual absences (lacunas). The empirical corpus comprises classical and modern Uzbek literary masterworks alongside their authoritative English and Russian translations. The analysis demonstrates that intertextual units operate along a dual syntagmatic-associative axis requiring source-pretext anchoring, whereas realias represent material ethnocultural referents, and lacunas reflect systemic verbal-conceptual asymmetries across linguistic worldviews.