Abstract: In modern humanities the range of issues, related to manifestations of intertextuality in texts of different language systems, their interpretation by the recipient, as well as the use of intertexts by authors of verbal and non-verbal texts, is still of great interest to researchers. Moreover, the intertext plays a significant role in modern text-creating. This makes important studying the structural characteristics of intertextual units with the aim of developing the technic of creation one’s own intertexts as well as translating intertexts of others. So, the object of the present research are the intertextual units in the postmodernist writings, the subject are their linguistic characteristics. As the material the author has chosen the fiction by Julio Cortázar, which is particularly reach in intertexts.
In order to delineate the existing definitions of intertextuality according to the “broad” and “restricted” approaches and precise our own vision of this phenomenon the author applied the methods of the cognitive sciences and semiotics. The general linguistic methods, such as description and observation, have been used in the analysis of the structure of the chosen intertextual units.
The scientific originality of the research consists in the description of the linguistic particularities of different types of quotes in Cortázar’s fiction. During the analysis, quotations based on literal reproduction of the original format of the intertextually borrowed saying and citations that change it have been defined. The author pays particular attention to the analysis of the attribution, considered the key structural component of an intertextual unit. The results of the research may form the basis of the further researches of the linguistics of intertext. It may also be of practical interest to the authors using intertextual units in their own texts, as well as to translators of Cortázar’s and other postmodernist writers’ fiction.