What are Syntagms and Paradigms?

You’ve probably heard the word paradigm before and have at least a sense of its
meaning. If you’re like me, the word syntagm is new. Syntagms and
paradigms explain with how signs relate to each other.
 Syntagmatic relationships are about positioning.
 Paradigmatic relationships are about substitution.
A syntagmatic relationship involves a sequence of signs that together create
meaning. A paradigmatic relationship involves signs that can replace each other,
usually changing the meaning with the substitution.
The words in a sentence are all syntagms and together they form a syntagmatic
relationship that creates meaning. If you change the order of syntagms in a
sentence it can change the meaning significantly.
 John ate an octopus.
 An octopus ate John.
Two sentences using the exact same words (syntagms), but very different
meanings because the order (the syntagmatic relationship) of the words
changed.
Sticking with John and his dinner, John might have chosen a variety of things to
eat besides octopus. He might have chosen beef, eggplant chicken, or pasta for
his meal. Each is part of a paradigm of foods or specifically foods John might
eat. The items in a paradigm share some kind of function and the paradigm is
the set or category they belong to.
Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations can be seen as different dimensions of
a sign and they’re often shown that way as in the following table.

The cow jumped over the moon

That dog walked around my yard

This cat slept under your bed

Our hamster ran inside its wheel

Their bird flew through our window

Pat’s fish swam in a fishbowl

The syntagmatic relationship is seen along the horizontal axis and the
paradigmatic relationship is seen along the vertical axis. Start at any row and
read across for the syntagmatic relationship. Look up and down any column for
the paradigmatic relationship.
For example, “The cow jumped over the moon” (syntagmatic) together form
one meaning, but you could replace cow with another word in the column
(paradigmatic) to form a different sentence with a different meaning such as the
“The fish jumped over the moon.”
Let me offer one more example. Here are a couple of three course meals. The
combination salad, salmon, ice cream forms a syntagmatic relationship as does
soup, steak, pie. Salmon and steak have a paradigmatic relationship because one
can be substituted for another.

Salad Salmon Ice Cream

Soup Steak Pie

Hopefully that’s clear. I should point out that syntagmatic relationships can also
be spatial or conceptual, however I think it’s fair to say sequences still play a
role in both. Changing the spatial relationship or the order in which concepts are
delivered changes their sequences as well as the overall meaning delivered.