On the aspect of meanings of polysemantic coordinating conjunctions in English

The article deals with the main types of relations introduced by coordinating conjunctions and and but as well as their functional characteristics in compound sentences and supraphrasal unities. The authors analyze the means of realization of the semantics typical of the conjunctions and determine the similarities and differences in semantic syntactic relations rendered by them. The authors also explore the possible interchangeability of the aforementioned conjunctions in certain contexts. The research is based on the examples taken from English fiction.