Udmurt Institute of History, Language and Literature, Udmurt Federal Research Center, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Izhevsk, Russian Federation, [email protected] ABSTRACT Introduction: the article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the functioning of complex sentences with explanatory subordinate clauses in Udmurt newspaper texts of the second half of the XX– the beginning of the XXI centuries. Objective: to identify the functioning of complex sentences expressing explanatory relations in Udmurt journalism. Research materials: journalistic texts of the newspapers “Sovetskoy Udmurtia” (1950–1959s) and “Udmurt Dunne” (2000–2017s). Results and novelty of the research: the scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time on the material of a journalistic text, the peculiarities of the functioning of explanatory sentences of the Udmurt language were studied: their frequency of use, synonymous constructions, the role of extralinguistic factors in the use of the studied types of a complex sentence in a newspaper article. As a result of the research, it was revealed that there are following types of complex sentences with explanatory subordinate clauses in the journalistic text of the Udmurt language: with subordinate conjunctions (shuysa ‘what, that’, budto (budto ke) ‘as if, as though’, with particles -a, meda, -a meda ‘whether’); with connectives (kin ‘who’; ma (mar) ‘what’; maly (marly) ‘why, with what purpose’; kyzy ‘how’, etc.); with connectives and correlatives (mae... soe ‘ that... what’; mar... soe ‘that... what’; sycheze... kudze ‘is like that... what’). Among them, complex explanatory sentences with connectives dominate (53,7%), in second place are complex sentences with explanatory subordinate clauses, the predicative parts of which are combined by subordinate conjunctions (46%). The phenomenon of syntactic synonymy is represented by transformation of complex explanatory sentences into conjunctionless complex sentences, into simple sentences with phrases with or without postpositions. The absence of the shuysa conjunction in the postposition of the subordinate clause and the replacement of this conjunction with the modal word pe were also revealed. The research revealed the prevalence of such synonymous phenomena as the replacement of subordinate clauses by verbal phrase without postpositions (34,6%), the loss of the conjunction shuysa (27,7%) and the replacement by postposition verbal phrase (26,2%). Unlike oral speech, written speech is characterized by the possibility of making changes by other participants of communication. Key words: Udmurt language, syntax of the Udmurt language, complex sentence, explanatory clause, newspaper texts For citation: Utkina A. F. The functioning of complex sentences with explanatory subordinate clauses in the modern Udmurt language (based on the material of journalistic texts) // Vestnik ugrovedenia = Bulletin of Ugric studies. 2024; 14 (1/56): 117–127.