We explain what a paradigm is and the different processes that must be followed. In addition, its definition in linguistics and social sciences.
-
What is a paradigm?
The concept of it reflects something specific that works as an example to follow . It is also used to indicate what works and is taken as a model.
In its beginnings, this word was only taken into account in a grammatical sense and only in a context. In addition, the rhetoric adopted a special appreciation for it, since it was used as a means of mentioning fables or parables whenever necessary.
Over the years, more precisely since 1960, the scientific field began to use “paradigm” more frequently , giving it a disfigured notion of the original. Within the epistemological sector it is used to refer to the various existing models and patterns.
To understand the concept of paradigm as a role model or example, the following example is cited: “Professor Julian, from primary school, is a great paradigm for children who are still in their training phase.”
Within the history of mankind, the first subject who used the concept in question is located in Ancient Greece: the Greek philosopher Plato. This character of great relevance in the philosophical field exposed his own vision and his own meaning of paradigm. Plato defines this term as a resource to be able to name a set of ideas or different types of examples found in a given thing.
With regard to the scientific field, the figure of Thomas Kuhn, recognized philosopher and scientist, stands out for renewing the concept of paradigm to one that adapts more to current times and pointing in turn to a more theoretical sense of the word . Khun states that a paradigm is made up of each practice necessary to highlight the lines of the different existing sciences during a specific period of time.
In this sense, a paradigm within science aims to achieve results in regards to scientific research . Therefore, a paradigm then links the different processes that must be followed, which are:
- Observe the subject in question
- Raise the different necessary questions regarding the objective to be achieved
- Outline these questions
- Define the structure that these must possess, and establish the different guidelines and rules to follow to achieve the required results
Although a paradigm obtains stable and mature characteristics, there is a possibility that it does not meet the necessary requirements for the results sought. This can occur when new knowledge appears in contrast to those that were available, therefore a paradigm must be changed to one that adapts to the current landscape.
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The paradigm in linguistics
In the linguistic field, the concept of paradigm adopts a different meaning than in science. Here this word is used to refer to a very varied set of words and as long as it remains in the same context , the use of any of them does not change the tonic that is sought to be exposed.
As an example, the following expression is cited: “That one (…) was alone.” Within the blank parenthesis of the previous expression, any noun, such as girl, old woman, young woman, cat, etc., can be included interchangeably.
As far as society and social sciences are concerned , the concept of paradigm is closely associated with that of worldview . In this way, the term in question is used to refer to the set of experiences, experiences, beliefs, ways of thinking and customs that have the ability to transform and influence the perception that a human being has about reality and the world that surrounds, as well as his way of acting.
In this sense, then, a paradigm is the way in which someone perceives reality in their own way.
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Значение paradigm значение
Что в английском языке означает paradigm?
Простое определение
paradigm
Noun
—
A system of beliefs, ideas, values, and habits that is a way of thinking about the real world.
At the time, this way of thinking was the dominant paradigm for social scientists.
—
A paradigm is an example, model or pattern, especially the most basic or central one.
For fifteen centuries Aristotle remained the paradigm of knowledge itself.
It provides paradigms of action and role models through which we interpret `real life’.
—
(Grammar) A paradigm is the set of all word forms.
The complete paradigm for boy is: boy, boy’s, boys, boys’, boyish.
paradigm
—
существительное
systematic arrangement of all the inflected forms of a word
—
прототип, модель, прообраз
существительное
(= prototype, image)
a standard or typical example
he is the prototype of good breeding
he provided America with an image of the good father
—
парадигма
существительное
the generally accepted perspective of a particular discipline at a given time
he framed the problem within the psychoanalytic paradigm
—
существительное
(= substitution class)
the class of all items that can be substituted into the same position (or slot) in a grammatical sentence (are in paradigmatic relation with one another)
Перевод paradigm перевод
Как перевести с английского paradigm?
Синонимы paradigm синонимы
Как по-другому сказать paradigm по-английски?
Примеры paradigm примеры
Как в английском употребляется paradigm?
Субтитры из фильмов
What a paradigm.
Что за экземпляр.
The earth will be renewed. And, say, if it’s true that plastic doesn’t degrade, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm, the earth plus plastic.
И, скажем, если это правда, что пластик не разлагается, ну, планета просто включит пластик в новую парадигму, земля плюс пластик.
A paradigm of chastity.
Символ непорочности.
Before on the old evolutionary paradigm, one would die and the other would grow and dominate.
Раньше, в условиях старой эволюционной парадигмы, одна умирает, а другая развивается и доминирует.
But under the new paradigm, they would exist. as a mutually supportive, noncompetitive grouping.
Но в новой парадигме они обе. будут существовать вместе, во взаимопомощи.
Doesn’t exactly fit the Casper paradigm.
Не очень подходит к теории про Каспера.
One of the most admirable things about Fidel is that of being a historical figure, a paradigm who is constantly referring to past experiences.
Одна из наиболее замечательных черт в Фиделе — это то, что он историческая личность, пример для подражания, который опирается постоянно на свой прошлый опыт.
So I was just wondering when we’re gonna have to sit down and reevaluate our decision-making paradigm.
Когда же мы попытаемся трезво оценить принципы, согласно которым принимаем решения.
Have we become a paradigm for it?
Мы стали парадигмой для этого?..
And we’re now realizing that that paradigm is wrong, that we aren’t separate. We are all one. We’re all together.
И теперь мы понимаем, что эта парадигма неверна, и что мы на самом деле не являемся отдельными от всего остального.
I think the key aspect of the new paradigm- at least in medicine, which is my little piece- um, is that consciousness is real and has an impact.
Мне кажется, ключевой аспект новой парадигмы, по крайней мере в медицине, которая является моей областью, это то, что сознание реально существует и оказывает сильное влияние.
The Skasas Paradigm.
Парадигма Скасаса.
They’re trying to crack the Skasas Paradigm.
Они пытаются взломать Парадигму Скасаса.
With the paradigm solved, reality becomes clay in our hands.
После решения парадигмы реальность станет глиной в наших руках.
Из журналистики
Jobs did more than navigate paradigm shifts; he essentially created them.
Джобс сделал больше, чем просто исследовал сдвиги парадигмы; он, по существу, сделал их.
It was the basis for Argentina, the paradigm for our lives and our way of living.
Она была фундаментом страны, парадигмой нашей жизни и нашего образа жизни.
Its thinking goes beyond the dominant, unilateral paradigm of its predecessor and includes a defense of international law.
Её суть выходит за рамки доминирующей, односторонней парадигмы предыдущей стратегии и включает в себя защиту международного права.
Is there another paradigm for the global financial system?
Существует ли какая-либо иная модель мировой финансовой системы?
A long track record of success can warp executives’ analysis, distort their decision-making, and leave them blind to incipient paradigm shifts or rapid changes in a market.
Длительная история успехов компании может исказить анализ руководителями нынешней ситуации, привести их к ошибкам в принимаемых решениях и оставить их слепыми в отношении зарождающихся перемен в обстановке или быстрых изменений на рынке.
Clearly, the European Council has decided on a paradigm shift: powers are moving to the ECB.
Очевидно, что Европейский Совет принял решение о смене парадигмы: власть переходит к ЕЦБ.
The year that has just passed has demonstrated — in the handling of the financial crisis and in trying to tackle climate change — both the need for and the difficulties of creating a new paradigm of global governance.
Только что прошедший год продемонстрировал — в ходе управления финансовым кризисом и при попытках решить проблему изменения климата — как необходимость, так и трудности создания новой парадигмы глобального управления.
Head further south to Central America — Guatemala in particular — and the failed state paradigm may be far more applicable.
Достаточно посмотреть южнее, на Центральную Америку, например на Гватемалу, и парадигма страны-банкрота окажется более применимой к этой стране.
More importantly, a strike could introduce a paradigm shift in the German labor market for two reasons.
Что еще более важно, так это то, что забастовка может привести к изменению парадигмы на немецком трудовом рынке по двум причинам.
Is China’s brand of state capitalism an alternative and potentially victorious paradigm?
Является ли китайский бренд государственного капитализма альтернативной и потенциально победоносной парадигмой?
In short, I do not share the view of many that, after the Internet and the personal computer, it will be a long wait until the next paradigm-shifting innovation.
Короче говоря, я не разделяю мнение многих, что после Интернета и персонального компьютера придется долго ждать, прежде чем появится инновация, которая сдвинет систему взглядов и понятий.
Barring another round of deep financial crises, it won’t be — as long as politicians do not stand in the way of the new paradigm of trade, technology, and artificial intelligence.
Еще одного витка глубокого экономического кризиса не будет, если политики не будут стоять на пути новой системы взглядов на торговлю, технологию и искусственный интеллект.
The paradigm of international security that had long dominated Japan’s defense thinking had shifted and policymakers realized that they had to shift with it.
Парадигма международной безопасности, которая долго доминировала над японским представлением об обороне, изменилась, и высшие чиновники поняли, что они должны были измениться вместе с ней.
In this context, the near ubiquity of mobile networks has created a new paradigm for sustainable development, putting technological advances at the forefront of policymaking.
В этих условиях, надвигающаяся вездесущность мобильных сетей создала новую парадигму устойчивого развития, поставив на передний план технологические достижения.
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Morphology is a sub discipline of linguistics that studies word structure. While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most (if not all) languages, words can be related to other words by rules. For example, any English speaker can see that the words dog, dogs and dog-catcher are closely related. English speakers can also recognize that these relations can be formulated as rules that can apply to many, many other pairs of words. Dog is to dogs just as cat is to cats, or encyclopædia is to encyclopædias; dog is to dog-catcher as dish is to dishwasher. The rule in the first case is plural formation; in the second case, a transitive verb and a noun playing the role of its object can form a word. Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies such rules across and within languages.
The term was coined by August Schleicher in 1859: Für die Lehre von der Wortform wähle ich das Wort «Morphologie» («for the science of word formation, I choose the term ‘morphology'», Mémoires Acad. Impériale 7/1/7, 35).
Contents
- 1 Important concepts
- 1.1 Lexemes and word forms
- 1.2 Inflection vs. word-formation
- 1.3 Paradigms and morphosyntax
- 1.4 Allomorphy and morphophonology
- 1.5 Lexical morphology
- 2 Models of morphology
- 2.1 Morpheme-based morphology
- 2.2 Lexeme-based morphology
- 2.3 Word-based morphology
- 3 Morphological typology
- 4 Footnotes
- 5 See also
- 6 Bibliography
Important concepts
Lexemes and word forms
The word «word» is ambiguous in common usage. To take up again the example of dog vs. dogs, there is one sense in which these two are the same «word» (they are both nouns that refer to the same kind of animal, differing only in number), and another sense in which they are different words (they can’t generally be used in the same sentences without altering other words to fit; for example, the verbs is and are in The dog is happy and The dogs are happy).
The distinction between these two senses of «word» is probably the most important one in morphology. The first sense of «word,» the one in which dog and dogs are «the same word,» is called lexeme. The second sense is called word form. We thus say that dog and dogs are different forms of the same lexeme. Dog and dog-catcher, on the other hand, are different lexemes; for example, they refer to two different kinds of entities. The form of a word that is chosen conventionally to represent the canonical form of a word is called a lemma or citation form.
Inflection vs. word-formation
Given the notion of a lexeme, it is possible to distinguish two kinds of morphological rules. Some morphological rules relate different forms of the same lexeme; while other rules relate two different lexemes. Rules of the first kind are called inflectional rules, while those of the second kind are called word-formation. The English plural, as illustrated by dog and dogs, is an inflectional rule; compounds like dog-catcher or dishwasher are an example of a word-formation rule. Informally, word-formation forms «new words» (that is, lexemes), while inflection gives you more forms of the «same» word (lexeme).
There is a further distinction between two kinds of word-formation: derivation and compounding. Compounding is a kind of word-formation which involves combining complete word forms into a compound; dog-catcher is a compound, because both dog and catcher are words. Derivation involves suffixes or prefixes that are not independent words; the word independent is derived from the word dependent by prefixing it with the derivational prefix in-, and dependent itself is derived from the verb depend.
The distinction between inflection and word-formation is not at all clear-cut. There are many examples where linguists fail to agree whether a given rule is inflection or word-formation. However, the next section will clarify this distinction further.
Paradigms and morphosyntax
The notion of a paradigm is closely related to that of inflection. The paradigm of a lexeme is the set of all of its word forms, organized by their grammatical categories. The familiar examples of paradigms are the conjugations of verbs, and the declensions of nouns. The word forms of a lexeme can usually be arranged into tables, by classifying them by shared features such as tense, aspect, mood, number, gender or case. For example, the personal pronouns in English can be organized into tables, using the categories of person, number, gender and case.
The categories used to group word forms into paradigms cannot be chosen arbitrarily; they must be categories that are relevant to stating the syntactic rules of the language. For example, person and number are categories that can be used to define paradigms in English, because English has grammatical agreement rules that require the verb in a sentence to appear in an inflectional form that matches the person and number of the subject. In other words, the syntactic rules of English care about the difference between dog and dogs, because it determines which form of the verb must be used; but in contrast, no syntactic rule of English cares about the difference between dog and dog-catcher, or dependent and independent. The first two are just nouns, and the second two just adjectives, and they generally behave like any other noun or adjective behaves.
The major difference between inflection and word formation is that inflectional forms of lexemes are organized into paradigms, which are defined by the requirements of syntactic rules. The part of morphology that covers the relationship between syntax and morphology is called morphosyntax, and it concerns itself with inflection and paradigms, but not with word-formation or compounding.
Allomorphy and morphophonology
In the exposition above, morphological rules are described as analogies between word forms: dog is to dogs as cat is to cats, and as dish is to dishes. In this case, the analogy applies both to the meaning of the words and to their forms: in each pair, the word in the left always means «one of X» and the one on the right «many of X», and at the distinction is always signaled by having the plural form have an -s at the end, which the singular does not have.
One of the largest sources of complexity in morphology is that this sort of one-to-one correspondence between meaning and form hardly ever holds. In English, we have word form pairs like ox/oxen, goose/geese, and sheep/sheep, where the difference between the singular and the plural is signaled in a different way from the regular pattern, or not signalled at all. Even the case we consider «regular», with the final -s, is not quite that simple; the -s in dogs is not pronounced the same way as the -s in cats, and in a plural like dishes, we have an «extra» vowel before the -s. These cases, where the same distinction is effected by different changes of form for different lexemes, are called allomorphy.
There are several kinds of allomorphy. One is pure allomorphy, where the allomorphs are just arbitrary. The most extreme cases here are called suppletion, where two forms related by a morphological rule are just arbitrarily different: for example, the past of go is went, which is a suppletive form.
On the other hand, other kinds of allomorphy are due to interaction between morphology and phonology. Phonological rules constrain which sounds can appear next to each other in a language, and morphological rules, when applied blindly, would often violate phonological rules, by resulting in impossible sound sequences. For example, if we were to try to form the plural of dish by just putting a -s at the end, we’d get *dishs, which is not permitted by the phonology; to «rescue» the word, we put a vowel sound in between, and get dishes. Similar rules apply to the pronunciation of the -s in dogs and cats: it depends on the quality (voiced vs. unvoiced) of the preceding phoneme.
The study of allomorphy that results from the interaction of morphology and phonology is called morphophonology. Many morphophonological rules fall under the category of sandhi.
Lexical morphology
Lexical morphology is the branch of morphology that deals with the lexicon, which, morphologically conceived, is the collection of lexemes in a language. As such, it concerns itself primarily with word-formation: derivation and compounding.
Models of morphology
There are three major families of approaches to morphology, which try to capture the distinctions above in different ways. These are:
- Morpheme-based morphology, which makes use of an Item-and-Arrangement approach.
- Lexeme-based morphology, which normally makes use of an Item-and-Process approach.
- Word-based morphology, which normally makes use of a Word-and-Paradigm approach.
Please note that while the associations indicated between the concepts in each item in that list is very strong, it is not absolute.
Morpheme-based morphology
In morpheme-based morphology, word forms are analyzed as sequences of morphemes. A morpheme is defined as the minimal meaningful unit of a language. In a word like independently, we say that the morphemes are in-, depend, -ent, and ly; depend is the root and the other morphemes are, in this case, derivational affixes.[1] In a word like dogs, we say that dog is the root, and that -s is an inflectional morpheme. This way of analyzing word forms as if they were made of morphemes put after each other like beads on a string, is called Item-and-Arrangement.
The morpheme-based approach is the first one that beginners to morphology usually think of, and which laymen tend to find the most obvious. This is so to such an extent that very often beginners think that morphemes are an inevitable, fundamental notion of morphology; and many five-minute explanations of morphology are, in fact, five-minute explanations of morpheme-based morphology. This is, however, not so; the fundamental idea of morphology is that the words of a language are related to each other by different kinds of rules. Analyzing words as sequences of morphemes is a way of describing these relations, but is not the only way. In actual academic linguistics, morpheme-based morphology certainly has many adherents, but is by no means absolutely dominant.
Applying a morpheme-based model strictly quickly leads to complications when one tries to analyze many forms of allomorphy. For example, it’s easy to think that in dogs, we have the root dog, followed by the plural morpheme -s; the same sort of analysis is also straightforward for oxen, with the stem ox, and a suppletive plural morpheme -en. But then, how do we «split up» the word geese into root + plural morpheme? How do we do so for sheep?
Theorists who wish to maintain a strict morpheme-based approach often preserve the idea in cases like these by saying that geese is goose followed by a null morpheme (a morpheme that has no phonological content), and that the vowel change in the stem is a morphophonological rule. It is also common for morpheme-based analyses to posit null morphemes even in the absence of any allomorphy. For example, if the plural noun dogs is analyzed as a root dog followed by a plural morpheme -s, then one might analyze the singular dog as the root dog followed by a null morpheme for the singular.
Lexeme-based morphology
Lexeme-based morphology is (usually) an Item-and-Process approach. Instead of analyzing a word form as a set of morphemes arranged in sequence, we think of a word form as the result of applying rules that alter a word form or stems, to produce a new one. An inflectional rule takes a stem, does some changes to it, and outputs a word-form; a derivational rule takes a stem, and outputs a derived stem; a compounding rule takes word-forms, and outputs a compound stem.
The Item-and-Process approach bypasses the difficulty described above for Item-and-Arrangement approaches. Faced with a plural like geese, we don’t have to assume there is a zero-morph; all we say is that while the plural of dog is formed by adding an -s to the end, the plural of goose is formed by changing the vowel in the stem.
Word-based morphology
Word-based morphology is a (usually) Word-and-Paradigm approach. This kind of theory takes paradigms as a central notion. Instead of stating rules to combine morphemes into word forms, or to generate word-forms from stems, word-based morphology states generalizations that hold between the forms of inflectional paradigms. The major point behind this approach is that many such generalizations are hard to state with either of the other approaches. The examples are usually drawn from fusional languages, where a given «piece» of a word, which a morpheme-based theory would call an inflectional morpheme, corresponds to a combination of grammatical categories, for example, «third person plural.» Morpheme-based theories usually have no problems with this situation, since one just says that a given morpheme has two categories. Item-and-Process theories, on the other hand, often break down in cases like these, because they all too often assume that there will be two separate rules here, one for third person, and the other for plural, but the distinction between them turns out to be artificial. Word-and-Paradigm approaches treat these as whole words that are related to each other by analogical rules. Words can be categorized based on the pattern that they fit into. This applies both to existing words and to new ones. Application of a different pattern than the one that was used historically can give rise to a new word, such as older replacing elder (where older follows the normal pattern of adjectival superlatives) and cows replacing kine (where cows fits the regular pattern of plural formation). While a Word-and-Paradigm approach can explain this easily, other approaches have difficulty with phenomena such as this.
Morphological typology
See the main article, morphological typology
In the 19th century, philologists devised a now classic classification of languages in terms of their morphology. According to this typology, some languages are isolating, and have little or no morphology; others are agglutinative, and their words tend to have lots of easily-separable morphemes; while yet others are fusional, because their inflectional morphemes are said to be «fused» together. The classic example of an isolating language is Chinese; the classic example of an agglutinative language is Turkish; both Latin and Greek are classic examples of fusional languages.
When one considers the variability of the world’s languages, it becomes clear that this classification is not at all clear-cut, and many languages don’t neatly fit any one of these types. However, examined against the light of the three general models of morphology described above, it is also clear that the classification is very much biased towards a morpheme-based conception of morphology. It makes direct use of the notion of morpheme in the definition of agglutinative and fusional languages. It describes the latter as having separate morphemes «fused» together (which often does correspond to the history of the language, but not to its synchronic reality).
The three models of morphology stem from attempts to analyze languages that more or less match different categories in this typology. The Item-and-Arrangement approach fits very naturally with agglutinative languages; while the Item-and-Process and Word-and-Paradigm approaches usually address fusional languages.
The reader should also note that the classical typology also mostly applies to inflectional morphology. There is very little fusion going on with word-formation. Languages may be classified as synthetic or analytic in their word formation, depending on the preferred way of expressing notions that are not inflectional: either by using word-formation (synthetic), or by using syntactic phrases (analytic).
Footnotes
- ^ The existence of words like appendix and pending in English does not mean that the English word depend is analyzed into a derivational prefix de- and a root pend. While all those were indeed once related to each other by morphological rules, this was so only in Latin, not in English. English borrowed the words from French and Latin, but not the morphological rules that allowed Latin speakers to combine de- and the verb pendere ‘hang’ into the derivative dependere.
See also
- affixation
- bound morpheme
- dependent-marking language
- head-marking language
- inflected language
- morphological typology
- noun case
- root morpheme
- syntactic hierarchy
- uninflected word
- distributed morphology
- nonconcatenative morphology
- unpaired word
Bibliography
- Bauer, Laurie. (2003). Introducing linguistic morphology (2nd ed.). Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. ISBN 0-878-40343-4.
- Bauer, Laurie. (2004). A glossary of morphology. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
- Bubenik, Vit. (1999). An introduction to the study of morphology. LINCON coursebooks in linguistics, 07. Muenchen: LINCOM Europa. ISBN 3-89586-570-2.
- Haspelmath, Martin. (2002). Understanding morphology. London: Arnold (co-published by Oxford University Press). ISBN 0-340-76025-7 (hb); ISBN 0-340-76206-5 (pbk).
- Katamba, Francis. (1993). Morphology. Modern linguistics series. New York: St. Martin’s Press. ISBN 0-312-10101-5 (hb). ISBN 0-312-10356-5 (pbk).
- Matthews, Peter. (1991). Morphology (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-41043-6 (hb). ISBN 0-521-42256-6 (pbk).
- Singh, Rajendra and Stanley Starosta (eds). (2003). Explorations in Seamless Morphology. SAGE Publications. ISBN 0-761-99594-3 (hb).
- Spencer, Andrew. (1991). Morphological theory: an introduction to word structure in generative grammar. No. 2 in Blackwell textbooks in linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-16143-0 (hb); ISBN 0-631-16144-9 (pb)
- Spencer, Andrew, & Zwicky, Arnold M. (Eds.) (1998). The handbook of morphology. Blackwell handbooks in linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-18544-5.
- Stump, Gregory T. (2001). Inflectional morphology: a theory of paradigm structure. No. 93 in Cambridge studies in linguistics. Cambridge: CUP. ISBN 0-521-78047-0 (hb).
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A paradigm is a set of associated concepts which are members of a category, and are represented by words. For example: sat, fat, hat, mat, bat.
What is a paradigmatic relation?
Paradigmatic relation is concerned with the way words are grouped together into categories, like nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. Words in the same group, or word class, can be exchanged for each other in a sentence: ‘The dog/cat/chimpanzee bit me ‘.
Let’s look at some of the theory behind this idea.
Semiotics, saussure, and paradigmatic delations
‘Paradigmatic relation’ is closely related to semiotics. Semiotics is about how meanings are produced by signs. The word semeion means ‘sign’ in greek.
Any sign is made up of two parts, a concept and sound-image. We do not mean a sound like a dog’s bark, but the sensory impression the word gives us. Signs explain the whole concept of the word and the meanings we attach to it. Language is then considered by Saussurean linguistics to be a self-enclosed system. Saussure replaces word ‘concept’ with signified and ‘sound-image’ with signifier. The word ‘tree’ has two parts: it is a sound (/ tri: /) and it is an idea (whatever you think of when you hear the word ‘tree’. The sound (/ tri: /) is the signifier and the idea-in-your-head is the signified.
Fig. 1 — A sign is made up of two parts.
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) is considered the founder of structuralist linguistics. Structuralist linguistics analyses the structure of language, and how meaning is embedded in words and sentences.
In his studies, Saussure offered three main ideas:
- A distinction between langue (the abstract language) and parole (language we use in everyday life).
- Language is arbitrary. We live in a global world, which means different languages use different words when referring to the same object. For example, in English we say dog, the French say chien, and Russians say собака. There is no reason why abstract concepts in language should be fixed.
- Signs gain meaning from their relationship with other signs. This leads to syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations.
Tip: Saussure offered theoretical reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language, which is an ancestor of the Indo-European language family that includes English, French, Russian, and Spanish!
Another way to think about signs is this picture:
Fig. 2 — In English, this means «this is not a pipe.»
You may know this, but this is not an actual pipe. We have randomly assigned meaning to the painting of a pipe. But it is not a pipe. It is a painting of a pipe. Magritte’s painting subverts our expectations about objects and their names.
The choice of signs and their arrangement in a sentence is crucial to understanding language analysis and semiotic relationships.
Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations
It may be easy to get these two terms mixed up…Let’s take a look at the differences between the two!
Syntagmatic relations
Syntagmatic relation refers to the relationship between words in a sentence. Any alterations to the word combination can change the meaning of the sentence:
- Paul is bathing a dog.
- A dog is bathing Paul.
Both sentences have the same components but in a different order. In other words, the syntagmatic relation explains how the word’s position in a sentence determines the meaning of the sentence.
Paul + is bathing + a dog
A dog + is bathing + Paul
A Syntagm is a ‘linguistic unit’ in a relationship with other such units in a particular sequence. Individual syntagms are the building blocks of text. Syntagms are grouped to form words, words are grouped to form phrases, and phrases are grouped to form sentences, etc. Paragraphs and chapters are considered a syntagm of words, and the grouping is sometimes called a chain.
Paradigmatic relations
Paradigmatic relation involves the differentiation and selection of words in a sentence. Look at this sentence:
The | man | cried
We can see how words can act as building blocks that make up the sentence. However, since paradigmatic relations involve substitutions and selections, we can replace a word in the sentence to make different combinations or meanings.
The | man | sang
Or:
The | man | died
Or even:
The | boy | cried.
Paradigmatic relationships are sets of associated words (paradigms) which are all members of some defining category.
Paradigmatic relations examples
Below are some more examples of paradigmatic relations:
↑ Paradigmatic Relations ↓ |
Subject | verb | Object | |
Determiner | Adjective | Noun | Noun | |
The | beautiful | woman | buys | some bread |
old | lady | buys | some cakes | |
handsome | man | sold | some vegetables | |
tall | boy | is eating | a hotdog |
As you can see, there are several possible variations of ‘The beautiful woman buys the bread’:
- The old lady buys some cakes.
- The handsome man sold some vegetables.
- The tall boy is eating a hotdog.
We can conclude that:
- Paradigmatic relation describes a substitution relationship between words with the same word class. The substitution occurs on a vertical axis, as shown in the diagrams above and below.
- Syntagmatic relation is about the relationship/position between words in a sentence. The syntagmatic relation occurs on the horizontal axis.
↑
Paradigmatic relations ↓ |
← Syntagmatic Relations → | |||
Subject | verb | Object | ||
Determiner | Adjective | Noun | Noun | |
The | beautiful | woman | buys | some brioche |
At | unattractive | lady | buys | some bread |
That | handsome | man | ate | some chicken |
Paradigmatic relation:
Let’s take ‘The beautiful woman buys some brioche’.
- The beautiful woman can choose to buy some bread or chicken instead of brioche.
- Brioche, bread, and chicken are parts of a paradigm of food that the beautiful woman can buy.
- The items in a paradigm share some unifying quality, and the paradigm is the set or category they belong to (food).
- Some words from the sentence can also be substituted vertically: ‘An unattractive (antonym) lady (synonymy) buys some bread (hyponymy)’.
Syntagmatic relation:
Let’s take ‘That handsome man ate some chicken’.
- The combination of ‘that handsome man + ate + some chicken’ forms a syntagmatic relationship.
- If the word position is changed, it also changes the meaning of the sentence, eg ‘Some chicken ate the handsome man’.
- Furthermore, the linear relationship also occurs at phrase-level: it is ‘handsome + man’, not ‘handsome + woman’.
What are the different types of paradigmatic relations?
There are different types of paradigmatic relations. From the examples above, we can see that paradigmatic relations involve substituting a word for another word from the same word class, either with a similar meaning (synonymy), an opposite meaning (antonymy), or a-kind-of meaning (hyponymy).
Synonymy
Synonymy is when words have similar meanings. The meaning of A is similar to B (A ≈ B).
Some examples of synonyms are:
- I want to live in a big country house ≈ I want to live in a huge country house.
- It was a difficult decision to make ≈ It was a hard decision to make.
- The food was excellent ≈ The food was great.
Synonyms can be divided into two subtypes:
- Absolute synonyms: the meaning and grammatical function of the synonymous words are exactly the same, eg airport and aerodrome.
- Partial synonyms: the meaning of the synonymous words are only similar. Partial synonyms can differ in collocation, register, and regional/social variation.
Be careful when doing word substitution with synonymy. Not every synonymous word fits in all situations (partial synonyms). You have to consider some factors, such as the context, relationship between words, register, regional variation, etc.
- ‘China has the world’s largest population’ vs. ‘China has the world’s most gigantic population’ → differ in collocation.
- ‘We will commence the construction next month’ vs. ‘We will start the construction next month’ → differ in register (formal-informal).
- ‘I’ll make some chocolate biscuits for Christmas’ vs. ‘I’ll make some chocolate cookies for Christmas’ → differ in regional usage (British English vs. American English).
Antonymy
Antonymy is when words have opposite meanings. The meaning of A is the opposite of B (A↔B).
Some examples of antonyms are:
- I want to live in a big country house ↔ I want to live in a small country house
- It was a difficult decision to make ↔ It was an easy decision to make
- The food was excellent ↔ The food was terrible
Antonyms can be divided into three subtypes:
- Gradable antonyms define words that are at the opposite ends of a spectrum with some gradation in between the two extremes, eg hot — cold.
- Complementary antonyms explain an either-or relationship between opposite word pairs, eg true — false.
- Relational/converse antonyms show a dependent relationship between the opposite words, eg husband-wife.
Important to note: The word substitution with antonym is relatively free without restrictions. Of course, you need to consider that the sentence’s meaning will change if you substitute a word with its antonym.
Hyponymy (hypernym & co-hyponym)
Hyponymy refers to a super- and subordination relationship between words. A is a kind of B (A ↑ ↓ B).
Some examples of hyponyms are:
- Sweep, wipe, and scrub (hyponyms) are kinds of (to) clean (hypernym).
- Red, blue, and yellow (hyponyms) are kinds of colours (hypernym).
- Poodle, labrador, and pomeranian (hyponyms) are kinds of dogs (hypernym).
If you want to keep the sentence meaning like its original, substitute the word with its hypernym (superordinate of a word) and not with its co-hyponym (hyponyms on the same hierarchical level). For instance,
I have to babysit my sister’s poodle this weekend.
- Meaning kept: substitute poodle with dog (hypernym of poodle) → ‘I have to babysit my sister’s dog this weekend’. The meaning is not exactly the same, but it generalizes the category.
- Meaning changed: substitute poodle with labrador (co-hyponym of poodle) → ‘I have to babysit my sister’s labrador this weekend’. The meaning is different.
With this in mind, the sentence ‘The beautiful woman buys some brioche’ can be re-written in a variety of meaningful ways. By using or we can create a range of sentences:
Example | The | beautiful | woman | buys | some brioche | |
similar meaning | synonym | The | pretty | lady | buys | some brioche |
opposite meaning | antonym | unattractive | man | sold | some brioche | |
superordinate meaning | hyponymous | beautiful | woman | buys | some bread |
Paradigmatic Relations — Key takeaways
- Paradigmatic relation is concerned with the substitution of words in a sentence as long as they belong to the same word class. A paradigm is a set of associated concepts or sound images which are members of a category, yet each element is different.
- Syntagmatic relation refers to the relationship between words in a sentence. A Syntagm is a relationship between words in the same sentence.
- Synonymy refers to words with similar meanings (A ≈ B), eg big — large, huge, gigantic.
- Antonymy refers to words with opposite meanings (A↔B), eg big — small.
- Hyponymy refers to a super- and subordination relationship between words (A ↑ ↓ B, where A is a kind of B), eg bread — brioche, challah, sourdough.
References
- Fig.2: Ceci n’est pas une pipe graffiti in Bucharest https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ceci_n%27est_pas_une_pipe_graffiti_in_Bucharest.jpg) bybixentro (https://www.flickr.com/photos/bixentro/2591838509/) is licensed by Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en)
Frequently Asked Questions about Paradigmatic Relations
Paradigmatic Relation involves the substitution and selection of words in a sentence to create different combinations or meanings, and is concerned with the way words are grouped together into categories.
An example of paradigmatic relation involves how words in the same group, or word class, can be exchanged for each other in a sentence: ‘The dog / cat / chimpanzee bit me’.
Some types of paradigmatic relation are synonymy, antonymy, and hyponymy — these are all examples of the substitution method.
Paradigmatic Relation involves the substitution and selection of words in a sentence to create different combinations or meanings. Syntagmatic relation refers to the relationship between words in a sentence and how any alterations to the word combination in a sentence can change the meaning of the sentence.
A paradigm is a set of associated concepts or sound images which are members of a category, yet each element is different.
Final Paradigmatic Relations Quiz
Paradigmatic Relations Quiz — Teste dein Wissen
Question
What is a hyponymous relationship?
Show answer
Answer
A hyponymous relationship explains a super- and subordination relationship between words.
Show question
Answer
A hyponym defines a more specific word for a broader term. It is the subordinate of hypernym.
Show question
Answer
A hypernym is a general term for a word. It is the superordinate of hyponym.
Show question
Answer
Co-hyponyms are hyponyms on the same hierarchical level
Show question
Question
Determine the hypernym, hyponym, and co-hyponym from these words:
cold, warm, temperature, and hot.
Show answer
Answer
Hypernym: temperature
hyponym: cold, warm, hot
co-hyponym: cold, warm, hot.
Show question
Question
Determine the hypernym, hyponym, and co-hyponym from these words:
suite, hotel room, deluxe room, and standard room.
Show answer
Answer
Hypernym: hotel room
hyponym: suite, deluxe room, standard room
co-hyponym: suite, deluxe room, standard room.
Show question
Question
Determine the hypernym, hyponym, and co-hyponym from these words:
novel, books, dictionary, and cookbook.
Show answer
Answer
Hypernym: books
hyponym: novel, dictionary, cookbook
co-hyponym: novel, dictionary, and cookbook.
Show question
Question
Are these words co-hyponyms to each other: pop, jazz, rock, and blues?
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Question
Are these words co-hyponyms to each other: sunny, cloudy, weather, rain, and snow?
Show answer
Question
What is meant by the multi-layer relationship in hyponymy?
Show answer
Answer
A word can be a hypernym and a hyponym of another word at the same time.
Show question
Question
How to test whether a set of words are hyponyms?
Show answer
Question
What kind of relationship do reading, learning, studying, and transcribing have? Is it hyponymy, polysemy, or meronymy?
Show answer
Question
What kind of relationship do the words good in these two sentences have:
‘Paul was a good man’ and ‘Tom was a good painter’?
Is it hyponymy, polysemy, or meronymy?
Show answer
Question
True or false — car windows, car doors, bumpers, and headlights are the hyponyms of cars.
Show answer
Question
True or false — roof, windows, doors, and walls are the meronyms of buildings.
Show answer
Answer
Antonymy is about opposite meanings.
Show question
Question
What are the three types of antonym?
Show answer
Answer
The three types of antonyms are complementary, relational / converse, and gradable antonyms.
Show question
Question
True or false — Complementary antonyms are word pairs that are dependent on each other, such as husband-wife.
Show answer
Question
True or false — Gradable antonyms are word pairs that are on the opposite ends of a spectrum with gradations in between, such as hot — cold.
Show answer
Question
True or false — Relational/converse antonyms are word pairs that are dependent on one another, such as doctor-patient.
Show answer
Question
What type of antonymy does this pair of words belong to?
parent — child
Show answer
Answer
Relational/converse antonyms
Show question
Question
What type of antonymy does this pair of words belong to?
Boring — interesting
Show answer
Question
What type of antonymy does this pair of words belong to?
Off — on
Show answer
Question
True or false — interior and exterior is a pair of complementary antonyms.
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Answer
True. Interior and exterior is a pair of complementary antonyms.
Show question
Question
True or false — high and low is a pair of relational/converse antonyms.
Show answer
Question
True or false — front and back is a pair of gradable antonyms.
Show answer
Question
Name three literary devices that use antonym.
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Question
Name the antonyms in this excerpt and name the literary device it uses:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity … (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859).
Show answer
Answer
The quote uses a series of paradoxes. It compares and contrasts two situations that seem impossible but are true, namely the best and worst, wisdom and foolishness, belief and incredulity.
Show question
Question
What is the opposite of antonymy?
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Question
True or false — The antonym of receive is accept and its synonym is reject.
Show answer
Answer
Synonymy is a term for a word with the same or nearly the same meaning as another word. If you substitute synonymous words, the meaning / sense of the sentence doesn’t change.
Show question
Question
What are the two types of synonyms?
Show answer
Answer
The two types of synonyms are absolute and partial synonyms.
Show question
Question
Are the sentences below synonymous with each other? If so, is it an absolute or a partial synonym (collocation, register, or regional / social variety)?
- You have a big house.
- You have a huge house.
Show answer
Answer
Yes, the two sentences are partial synonyms in collocation.
Show question
Question
Are the sentences below synonymous with each other? If so, is it an absolute or a partial synonym (collocation, register, or regional / social variety)?
- The salesman endeavored to attract my attention.
- The salesman tried to attract my attention.
Show answer
Answer
Yes, the two sentences are partial synonyms in register. Endeavour has a similar meaning to try but has a higher degree of formality.
Show question
Question
Are the sentences below synonymous with each other? If so, is it an absolute or a partial synonym (collocation, register, or regional / social variety)?
- He is a truck driver.
- He is a lorry driver.
Show answer
Answer
The two sentences are partial synonyms in regional / social variety. Truck has a similar meaning to lorry but is commonly used in American English (lorry is more common in British English).
Show question
Question
True or false — Absolute synonyms are common.
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Answer
False. Absolute synonyms are very rare.
Show question
Question
Are the sentences below a partial synonym in collocation, register, or regional / social variety?
-
These numbers are surprisingly low. Can you verify them?
-
These numbers are surprisingly low. Can you check them?
Show answer
Answer
The two sentences are partial synonyms in register. Verify has a similar meaning to check but has a higher degree of formality.
Show question
Question
Are the sentences below a partial synonym in collocation, register, or regional / social variety?
- He placed the glass gently.
- He placed the glass carefully.
Show answer
Answer
The two sentences are partial synonyms in collocation.
Show question
Question
Are the sentences below a partial synonym in collocation, register, or regional / social variety?
- The shop was closed.
- The store was closed.
Show answer
Answer
The two sentences are partial synonyms in regional / social variety. Shop has a similar meaning to store but is commonly used in British English (store is more common in American English).
Show question
Question
What is the difference between synonymy and homonymy?
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Answer
Synonymy is about words that have similar meanings. Homonymy is about words that are the same in pronunciation or spelling or both, and their meanings are dissimilar.
Show question
Question
True or false — The words fly in these two sentences are homonyms:
-
Do you know how to fly a kite?
-
He swatted the fly with a magazine.
Show answer
Answer
True. The words fly in both sentences have the same pronunciation and spelling but differ in meaning. Thus, they’re homonyms.
Show question
Question
Are the sentences below synonymous with each other? If not, what relationship do they have?
- My brother is coming over for a couple of days next spring.
- The mattress has lost its spring.
Show answer
Answer
No, the two sentences are not synonymous. The first spring refers to ‘the season’, while the second refers to ‘the ability to return to its usual shape after it has been pressed’. They are homonymous (words that have different meanings but are the same in pronunciation and spelling).
Show question
Question
What is the difference between synonymy and polysemy?
Show answer
Answer
Synonymy is about words that have similar meanings. Polysemy is about a single word that has more than one meaning.
Show question
Question
True or false — The words wing in these two sentences are polysemies:
-
The radical wing of the party has dominated the discussion.
-
There’s a dent in the left wing of your car.
Show answer
Answer
True. The words wing in both sentences have the same form but different meanings. Thus, they’re polysemies.
Show question
Question
Are the sentences below synonymous with each other?
- Let me have my drink then we can go.
- He has a drinking problem.
Show answer
Answer
No, the two sentences are not synonymous. The first drink refers to ‘any liquid for drinking’, while the second drink in drinking problem refers to ‘an alcoholic drink’. They are polysemous (a word that has several meanings).
Show question
Question
True or false — Paradigmatic relation is about a relation between words that co-occur in the same sentence.
Show answer
Question
What do paradigmatic relations involve?
Show answer
Answer
The substitution and selection of words in a sentence to make different combinations or meanings.
Show question
Question
Name some methods for word substitution in paradigmatic relation.
Show answer
Answer
Some methods for word substitution in paradigmatic relation are synonymy, hyponymy, and antonymy.
Show question
Question
True or false — Enquire is a synonym of ask but differs in register.
Show answer
Question
True or false — Shop is a synonym of store but differs in collocation (bookshop vs. bookstore).
Show answer
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par·a·digm
(păr′ə-dīm′, -dĭm′)
n.
1. One that serves as a pattern or model.
2. A set or list of all the inflectional forms of a word or of one of its grammatical categories: the paradigm of an irregular verb.
3. A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.
[Middle English, example, from Late Latin paradīgma, from Greek paradeigma, from paradeiknunai, to compare : para-, alongside; see para-1 + deiknunai, to show; see deik- in Indo-European roots.]
Usage Note: Paradigm first appeared in English in the 1400s, meaning «an example or pattern,» and it still bears this meaning today: Their company is a paradigm of the small high-tech firms that have recently sprung up in this area. For nearly 400 years paradigm has also been applied to the patterns of inflections that are used to sort the verbs, nouns, and other parts of speech of a language into groups that are more easily studied. Since the 1960s, paradigm has also been used in science to refer to a theoretical framework, as in a new paradigm for understanding diabetes. This usage was acceptable to 91 percent of the Usage Panel in our 2009 survey. Applications of the term in other contexts show that it can sometimes be used more loosely to mean «the prevailing view of things.» The Usage Panel also accepts these nonscientific extensions. In 2009, 74 percent accepted the sentence The paradigm governing international competition and competitiveness has shifted dramatically in the last three decades. This represents a dramatic increase over the 48 percent that accepted the same sentence in 1993.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
paradigm
(ˈpærəˌdaɪm)
n
1. (Grammar) grammar the set of all the inflected forms of a word or a systematic arrangement displaying these forms
2. a pattern or model
3. a typical or stereotypical example (esp in the phrase paradigm case)
4. (Philosophy) (in the philosophy of science) a very general conception of the nature of scientific endeavour within which a given enquiry is undertaken
[C15: via French and Latin from Greek paradeigma pattern, from paradeiknunai to compare, from para-1 + deiknunai to show]
paradigmatic, paradigmatical adj
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014
par•a•digm
(ˈpær əˌdaɪm, -dɪm)
n.
1. a set of all the inflected forms of a word based on a single stem or root, as boy, boy’s, boys, boys’.
2. an example serving as a model; pattern: a paradigm of virtue.
[1475–85; < Late Latin paradīgma < Greek parádeigma pattern; <paradeiknýnai to show side by side =para- para-1 + deiknýnai to show]
Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
paradigm
1. a declension, conjugation, etc. that provides all the inflectional forms and serves as a model or example for all others.
2. any model or example. — paradigmatic, paradigmatical, adj.
See also: Grammar
-Ologies & -Isms. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Noun | 1. | paradigm — systematic arrangement of all the inflected forms of a word
inflection, inflexion — a change in the form of a word (usually by adding a suffix) to indicate a change in its grammatical function |
2. | paradigm — a standard or typical example; «he is the prototype of good breeding»; «he provided America with an image of the good father»
epitome, prototype, image example, model — a representative form or pattern; «I profited from his example» concentrate — a concentrated example of something; «the concentrate of contemporary despair» imago — (psychoanalysis) an idealized image of someone (usually a parent) formed in childhood |
|
3. | paradigm — the class of all items that can be substituted into the same position (or slot) in a grammatical sentence (are in paradigmatic relation with one another)
substitution class category, class, family — a collection of things sharing a common attribute; «there are two classes of detergents» |
|
4. | paradigm — the generally accepted perspective of a particular discipline at a given time; «he framed the problem within the psychoanalytic paradigm»
perspective, view, position — a way of regarding situations or topics etc.; «consider what follows from the positivist view» |
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
paradigm
Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002
paradigm
noun
One that is worthy of imitation or duplication:
The American Heritage® Roget’s Thesaurus. Copyright © 2013, 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.