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Paradigmatic
Paradigmatic / Syntagmatic relations
“[Ferdinand de Saussure] emphasized that meaning arises from the differences
between signifiers; these differences are of two kinds: syntagmatic (concerning
positioning) and paradigmatic (concerning substitution). The syntagm is understood
as the linear sequence of oral and written language. Saussure called the latter
associative relations (Saussure, 1983, 121; Saussure, 1974, 122) but Roman
Jakobson's term is now used. The distinction is a key one in structuralist semiotic
analysis. These two dimensions are often presented as 'axes', where the horizontal
axis is the syntagmatic and the vertical axis is the paradigmatic. The plane of the
syntagm is that of the combination of 'this-and-this-and-this' (as in the sentence, 'the
man cried') whilst the plane of the paradigm is that of the selection of 'this-or-this-orthis' (e.g. the replacement of the last word in the same sentence with 'died' or
'sang').” (Chandler, 2002).
Example:
Syntagmatic axis
Librarians are searching
information
Users
are looking for
documents
He
is
facts
looking for
P
a
r
a
d
i
g
m
a
t
i
c
a
x
i
s
Green (1995a) found that effective use of syntagmatic relationships in index
languages has suffered from inaccurate or incomplete characterization in both
linguistics and information science. A number of ''myths'' about syntagmatic
relationships are debunked: the exclusivity of paradigmatic and syntagmatic
relationships, linearity as a defining characteristic of syntagmatic relationships, the
restriction of syntagmatic relationships to surface linguistic units, the limitation of
syntagmatic relationship benefits in document retrieval to precision, and the general
irrelevance of syntagmatic relationships for document retrieval. None of the
mechanisms currently used with index languages is powerful enough to achieve the
levels of precision and recall that the expression of conceptual syntagmatic
relationships is in theory capable of. New designs for expressing these relationships in
index languages will need to take into account such characteristics as their semantic
nature, systematicity, generalizability, and constituent nature.
Literature:
Broughton, Vanda (2007). Meccano, molecules, and the organization of knowledge.
The continuing contribution of S. R. Ranganathan. Second KOKO (KOnnecting
KOmmunities) event held by ISKO UK on 5th November entitled Ranganathan
https://arkiv.inf.ku.dk//KoLifeboat/CONCEPTS/paradigmatic.htm
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Paradigmatic
Revisited: Facets for the future.
http://www.iskouk.org/presentations/vanda_broughton.pdf
Chandler, D. (1994): Semiotics for Beginners. (Chapter 4: Paradigms and Syntagms).
[WWW document]. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/ [January 15,
2004]
Green, R. (1995a). Syntagmatic relationships in indexing languages: A reassessment.
Library Quarterly, 65(4), 365-385.
Green, R. (1995b). The expression of conceptual syntagmatic relationships: A
comparative survey. Journal of Documentation, 51(4), 315-338.
Green, R. (1995c). Topical relevance relationships 1: Why topic matching fails. Journal
of the American Society for Information Science, 46(9), 646-653.
Saussure, Ferdinand de ([1916] 1974): Course in General Linguistics (translated by
Wade Baskin). London: Fontana/Collins.
Saussure, Ferdinand de ([1916] 1983): Course in General Linguistics (translated by
Roy Harris). London: Duckworth.
Warner, J. (2007). Analogies Between Linguistics and Information Theory. Journal of
the American Journal of Information Science & Technology, 58(3), 309–321.
See also: Natural Language Processing; Syntactical devises
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 19-11-2007
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