To what extent do conjunctions fit into sýndesmoi?

According to ancient Greek grammarians, words are divided into eight parts of speech, including, among others, a category called sýndesmos, which literally means ‘binding together’ and is rendered in Latin by the term coniunctio. Despite the clear connection of the ancient terms to the modern term conjunction, which is also conventionally used to translate both sýndesmos and coniunctio, the two categories of conjunction and sýndesmos differ in many respects. Accordingly, this paper treats them as two distinct categories and deals with the different methodological problems encountered when dealing with the modern grammatical description of conjunctions used to signal either coordinate or subordinate relations in ancient languages. The paper first provides an overview of the definition of the category of sýndesmos according to Ancient Greek grammarians, adding some definitions of the Latin term coniunctio. Second, it discusses the definition of conjunction from both a traditional and a typological per- spective. In this regard, it focuses on subordination and adverbial relations. Finally, it presents a case study of the Ancient Greek conjunction epeí ‘since’, ‘because’, addressing its degree of compatibility with the categories of sýndesmos and conjunction, respectively, on the basis of features emerging from a usage-based investigation.