The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Paradigmatic Relationship

an opposing relationship of several elements of language involving a choice of one of a number of mutually exclusive elements. The language units are thus joined in a speaker’s consciousness despite the impossibility of the units’ actually being joined in a speech event. The either-or function of a paradigmatic relationship is opposed to the both-and function of a syntagmatic relationship, in which elements of language coexist when they are realized in a speech event. Parádigmatic relationships are nonlinear and nonsimultaneous. A form’s syntagmatic characteristics are apparently dependent on its paradigmatic properties.

Paradigmatic relationships were first described by F. de Saussure, who termed them associative relationships, in opposition to syntagmatic relationships.

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References in periodicals archive

Semantically (25a) is the basis of (25b), formally there is a paradigmatic relationship between an NP and a derived adjective expressed by a second order schema:

Thus we see that word formation may be based semantically on a systematic paradigmatic relationship with lexical phrases.

A third conclusion concerns the relationship between morphology and syntax: since there are productive phrasal lexical constructions, and word formation may be based on paradigmatic relationships with such phrasal lexical units, there is no sharp divide between lexicon and grammar, but the formal distinction between syntactic and morphological constructs must be preserved.

Language use and the architecture of grammar: a construction morphology perspective/Jezicna uporaba i ustroj gramatike: perspektiva konstrukcijske morfologije

In the above syntagm, for example, the word 'young' stands in a paradigmatic relationship with the words 'old', 'tall', etc.

Distributional hypothesis: words for 'human being' and their Estonian collocates

The desire to reflect the "common notion that must and may stand in a paradigmatic relationship" (Narrog 2010) is a nice example of top-down thinking.

Epistemic modality in context: author's reply to 'evidentiality in epistemic modality--is it enough to look at individual markers in isolation?' (Narrog 2010)

Throughout Chaucerian Theatricality John Ganim's purpose is not so much to align his author with the creators of dramatic literature, as to divert emphasis away from the hackneyed but resilient concept of a paradigmatic relationship between The Canterbury Tales and works of drama, towards images of the poet as performance-artist and his poem as performance-artifact.

Chaucerian Theatricality

It would also reflect the common notion that must and may stand in a paradigmatic relationship. That must should express the process of evaluation itself is hard to grasp.

Are we to deny a paradigmatic relationship between the English modals as posited by Palmer (1990) or Halliday (2004)?

Evidentiality in epistemic modality--let's get the whole picture: comment on 'building a semantic map: top-down versus bottom-up approaches' by Ferdinand de Haan (2010)

A modern dictionary, therefore, will concern itself not only with meanings, but with syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships. (p.

The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 1, Aleph