Towards the description of multiword connectives in Russian: ne tol’ko… no i ‘not only… but also’

This article discusses the description of multiword connectives in Russian on the example of ne tol’ko… no i ‘not only... but also’, a connective with a high degree of variability. In order to achieve a non-contradictory and systematic solution, the author proposes to separate the two levels of analysis— conceptual and linguistic, i. e. the type of logical-semantic relation and the means that the language has for its expression respectively. The relation established by ne tol’ko... no i can be defined as a relation of non-uniqueness; the minimal item capable of expressing it is the particle ne tol’ko ‘not only’. All other means of connection formed on its basis with the conjunctions a ‘and / but’ and no ‘but’ (and various kinds of particles) do not belong to the system of language: they represent speech realizations dependent on the speaker’s communicative purpose, preceding context and semantic content the speaker has chosen for this a type of syntactic structure and intends to express.