Conjunctions, Clines and Levels of Discourse 7 (3) A third distinction is in terms of the specific semantic contribu- tion of the conjunctions. By placing the conjunctions within the semantic domain categories, Louw and Nida seem to imply a maximalist rather than a minimalist view of the semantics of the conjunctions. This is con- firmed by the fact that they provide similar glosses for the conjunctions within domains 89 and 91 as they do for the other non-conjunctive words, and for the words throughout the rest of the lexicon. There is debate among scholars regarding the semantic contribution of conjunctions. For example, Halliday and Hasan in their treatment of cohesion in English indicate that the conjunctions themselves add virtually nothing to the joining together of units13. This minimalist position is similar to that taken by Schiffrin, Dik and Black14. However, Halliday, Schiffrin and Dik elsewhere, as Black points out, also indicate that there are various logical or semantic functions indicated by conjunction, thus moving away from a minimalist position. Halliday speaks of various logical-semantic notions, Schiffrin speaks of selection of semantic features, and Dik defines four semantic categories for coordinators15. Black herself takes a minimalist approach, wishing to characterize the use of sentence conjunctions in Matthew solely in terms of procedural relations (e.g. continuity and dis- continuity and the like)16. The tendency seems to be to want to create a disjunction between minimalist and maximalist semantic values for con- junctions. The indications from Greek, however, are that the functional system is more complex, and involves both procedural conjunctions with what Dik calls “low semantic specificity”17, and procedural conjunctions that define more specific and definable logical-semantic relations, such as causality and temporality. This may account for the organization of the Louw-Nida lexicon, although they divide the words differently than we do below. As procedural or function words, conjunctions contribute minimal semantic features to their use. This is not to say that conjunc- tions are meaningless or contribute nothing to discourse, especially as they are used to guide understanding. The tendency in studies of con- junctions, especially in New Testament Greek studies, is often, however, to maximalize the semantics of all of the conjunctions. Halliday and Hasan, Cohesion in English, 229. 13 D. Schiffrin, “Functions of And in Discourse”, Journal of Pragmatics 10 (1986) 41- 14 66, esp. 47; S.C. Dik, Coordination: Its Implications for the Theory of General Linguistics (Amsterdam 1972) 269; Black, Sentence Conjunctions, 45-49, 51-52. M.A.K. Halliday, An Introduction to Functional Grammar (2nd ed.; London 1994) 15 324, 330 (continued at least in part in the third edition of 2004 on p. 549); Schiffrin, Dis- course Markers, 318; Dik, Coordination, 271-81. See Black, Sentence Conjunctions, 46-48. 16 Dik, Coordination, 269. 17