syntagm

A syntagm is a linear sequence of linguistic signs that forms a meaningful unit in discourse, such as a sentence, clause, or phrase. The meaning of a syntagm arises from the specific arrangement and adjacency of its elements, with each position constraining what can occur next. Syntagms are studied in contrast to paradigms, which concern the set of alternative signs that could replace elements in the same slot.

The concept is central to structural linguistics, especially in Saussurean theory, where syntagmatic relations describe how signs combine in sequence within a text, while paradigmatic relations describe substitutions that could occur at a given point. For example, the sequence “the cat sat on the mat” is a syntagm; the nouns, verbs, or adjectives that could occupy each slot constitute its paradigmatic axis.

Applications include analysis of syntax and discourse structure, as well as broader semiotic analysis of signs in texts. In linguistics, syntagms help distinguish actual utterances from the underlying system of possible substitutions. In computational linguistics, syntagmatic constraints inform parsing and language modeling, focusing on sequential dependencies and co-occurrence patterns that shape how strings of signs are interpreted.