Paradigmata

Paradigmata is the plural form of paradigm, used in scholarly writing to indicate several paradigms or a collection of related models or frameworks. The term paradigm comes from the Greek paradeigma, meaning “pattern” or “example,” and entered English via Latin as paradigma. While English commonly uses paradigms as the plural, paradigmata remains in use in certain disciplines and historical contexts.

In the philosophy of science, a paradigm denotes a broadly accepted framework of theories, methods, and standards that guide research within a field. The concept gained prominence through Thomas Kuhn, who argued that scientific progress occurs via paradigm shifts—fundamental reorganizations of underlying assumptions followed by periods of normal science within a new framework. The plural paradigmata would refer to multiple such frameworks or eras across disciplines or historical periods.

In linguistics and related fields, paradigm has a second sense as a set of related word forms or grammatical categories. A verb paradigm, for example, includes its tense and mood forms. In this sense, paradigmata may be used when discussing several such form systems across languages or across historical stages of a language, though paradigm s is more common in contemporary prose.

Usage notes: paradigmata is a classical or technical plural, and in modern writing paradigm s is usually preferred. Nonetheless, paradigmata appears in scholarly works to emphasize historical depth, cross-linguistic comparison, or to preserve a particular stylistic register.

Overall, paradigmata denotes patterns of structure or sets of examples that scholars use to organize observation, theory, and language.