SYNTAGMATIC AND

PARADIGMATIC
SENSE RELATIONS
Part 1
Dr. Dalia Asseel
What is Sense?
◦ The SENSE of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in
the language. The SENSE of an expression is its indispensable hard core of meaning.
◦ The sense of an expression is an abstraction.
◦ What a word means depends in part on its associations with other words, the relational aspect.
◦ Lexemes do not merely ‘have’ meanings; they contribute meanings to the utterances in which they occur,
and what meanings they contribute depends on what other lexemes they are associated with in these
utterances. The meaning that a lexeme has because of these relationships is the sense of that lexeme.
Sense relations
◦ Sense relations: the meaning of any expression varies with context, what other expressions it occurs
with and what expressions it contrasts with.
1. Part of this relationship is seen in the way words do, or do not, go together meaningfully.
e.g., It makes sense to say John walked and it makes sense to say An hour elapsed. It doesn’t make sense to say John
elapsed or An hour walked. Part of the meaning of elapse is that it goes with hour, second, minute, day but not with
John, and part of the meaning of hour, second and so forth is that these words can co-occur with elapse.
2. Part of the relationship is seen in the way word meanings vary with context.
e.g., A library is a collection of books (Professor Jones has a rather large library) and is also a building that houses a
collection of books (The library is at the corner of Wilson and Adams Streets).
 Paradigmatic
◦ The meaning of a lexeme is, in part, its relation to other lexemes of the and
language. Each lexeme is linked in some way to numerous other lexemes of the
language. Two kinds of linkage are noticed, i.e., paradigmatic and syntagmatic Syntagmatic
relations. Sense
Relations
Paradigmatic are the
different choices of words
we can use in the same
syntactic category while
syntagmatic is the mutual
association of two or more
words in a sequence so that
the meaning of each is
affected by the other(s) and
together their meanings
contribute to the meaning of
the larger unit, the phrase or
sentence.
Paradigmatic relations
◦ Paradigmatic relations reflect the semantic choices available at a particular structure point in a sentence. For instance:
I'll have a glass of — .
juice
water
lemonade
◦ Typically, paradigmatic relations involve words belonging to the same syntactic category, although not infrequently there are minor
differences:
We bought some — .
knives
forks
spoons
cutlery
Here, cutlery is a mass noun, whereas all the others in the list are count nouns.
◦ In principle, paradigmatic relations may hold between members of any of the major syntactic categories.
Paradigmatic relations
◦ The following are examples involving verbs and adjectives respectively:
John — across the field,
ran
walked
crawled
Syntagmatic relations
◦ Syntagmatic relations hold between items which occur in the same sentence, particularly those which stand in an intimate syntactic
relationship.
◦ It is the relation of the lexeme with other lexemes with which it occurs in the same phrases or sentences, in the way that sit co-occur
with chair, read with book or newspaper. For instance,
(1) The girl ran across the field. is normal, but
(2) The girl sat across the field. and
(3) The smell ran across the field. are odd.
◦ It is the combination of verb and prepositional phrase (i.e. sat and across the field) which causes the oddness, whereas in (3), it is the
combination of subject and verb (i.e. the smell and ran).
◦ Any well-formed sentence of a natural language can be thought of as a string of elements, each one chosen from a set of possibilities
provided by the language.
◦ The set of possibilities from which the choice was made is not completely free, but is constrained by the other elements in the sentence,
in the sense that a choice from outside a certain range will result in semantic incoherence.
◦ Thus, if we do not choose something from the realm of liquids for the completion of John drank a glass of —, the result will not be
coherent.
Paradigmatic
relations
◦ In short, paradigmatic relation can be compared
to the different choices of clothes you can choose
from, e.g., different top wear (blouses, crop tops,
shirts, etc.), or different bottom wear (jeans,
baggy pants, skirts, etc.) or different footwear
(sandals, boots, shoes, slippers, etc.).
 ◦ While paradigmatic relations can be compared to the different

Syntagmatic choices we have in a closet, syntagmatic relations can be

compared to all the things that we have to wear to make a
complete outfit. A pair of jeans will be perfect with a hoodie and

relations a pair of sneakers to make me look elegant. The same is with

syntagmatic relations where the structure and sequence are very
important to make a complete sense of a sentence.
Paradigmatic vs. Syntagmatic
 Paradigmatic vs. Syntagmatic
Paradigmatic Syntagmatic

Paradigmatic sense relations operate within the sets Syntagmatic sense relations are an
of choices. expression of coherence constraints.
Practice on paradigmatic relations
Practice on syntagmatic relations
References
◦ Cruse, A. (2011). Meaning in Language: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics. New York:
Oxford University Press.
◦ Hurford, J. R., Heasley, B., & Smith, M. B. (2003). Semantics: A coursebook. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
◦ Kreidler, C. (2002). Introducing English semantics. London: Routledge.