The present study reports seven semantic classes of Chinese coordinators in a functional-typological setting that were alternatively categorized in previous literature. The paper begins by reviewing the mainstream functional-typological approach in modern linguistic typology, as well as the current studies of coordinators in Chinese. We then provide an operational definition of coordinators, obtain a number of potential coordinators inspired by authentic uses in large scale corpora, and classify them into seven semantic categories. The legitimacy of their statuses is argued for in turn. Our research expands on the traditional conception of coordinators. In addition, it provides a third, corpus-informed approach to less noticed linguistic phenomena. This method can be performed in a single language, as a supplement to introspection and inspecting under-described languages.