On explaining “Explanations”

What is an explanation? The popular responses are: We can explain what a word means, how to run a computer programme, why John decided to marry Jane, and even historical facts like the extinction of the dinosaurs. But what about explananda such as the linguistic entity “Who saw John?”. The paper surveys a spectrum of responses, some theory-free, others theory-bound. For all of these, we employ the six Dimensions of explanation