Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships

Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships

Linguistic units are intimately interrelated by two types of relationship: syntagmatic and paradigmatic; the former are directly observable, they are present, while the latter must be intuited, they are absent. Both complement each other and cannot be conceived separately.

Definitions

• Syntagmatic relations: they are combinatorial relations in the presence of other linguistic elements, they occur between the successive elements of the statement, they are present. They are expansively related one after another according to the positional order of the elements of a sentence. They are relationships of meaning that each linguistic sign maintains with the remaining ones of different grammatical categories, either in the same phrase or in the sentence. Both syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationship are mandatory to understand
• Paradigmatic relations: they are the relations of meaning existing between the signs of the same syntactic category, they are the associative relations that exist between the units of the system, that is, between the simultaneous units (they form the paradigm), they are absent. .

Syntagmatic and paradigmatic structures

• Syntagmatic structure : set of words grouped around a nucleus with the same syntactic and sense function. It is any syntactic structure consisting of one or more words. The combination occurs in the presence of other linguistic elements.

Example:

Friend – SN My friend – SN My good friend – SN My good friend from my school – SN My good friend from my school the most playful – SN My good friend from my school the most playful as my dog

• Paradigmatic structure : it is the vertical relationship of the signs due to the absence of other linguistic elements. Continuously they are in paradigmatic relation all the disinheritments of a verbal radical, where one appears, it can appear, replacing it, any of the others of the verbal paradigm.

A paradigm is a series of elements that can occupy the same situation, taking into account that they can substitute each other and that the use of one of them excludes the use of all others in the paradigm. They are, therefore, in opposition, the value of each element appears in opposition to the others of the paradigm, it constitutes a closed set or finished in synchrony: when using the remarkable word, it is excluded outstanding, approved and suspense, since the four terms can occupy that position, form a paradigm at the semantic level. Example:

The words Mesa and Peso are paradigmatic.

In modern linguistics, the set of units that can appear and exchange in a given context is designated by this name.