MA Class 2012 Sulaimani University, Kurdistan Region of Iraq

1. Paradigmatic and syntagmatic
relations
By Dr.Hoshang Farooq
Assistant professor- Sulaimani
University

2. • Paradigmatic is a term that describes the substitutional
relationships that a linguistic unit has with other units. For
example in the sentence below (I hunted a bear), each of the
words can be exchanged with a number of other words
without changing the basic syntactic arrangement:
• I hunted a bear.
• You hunted a mouse.
• He fed a cat.
• We looked after rabbit.
• The man caged a parrot.

3. • Question: what is the importance of paradigmatic relations?
• The paradigmatic relation is one of the important criteria in
the classification of words into various categories such as
noun, verb, pronouns, etc. Items which can substitute for (I)
will be pronouns, whilst those which substitute for (hunted)
will be verbs.
• Question: Are paradigmatic relations realized at the syntactic
level only?
• No, they can be realized at all levels of language. For
example, at the phonological level, the phonemes
/p/, /k/, and /f/ can all be substituted for /f/ in the context of
/-it/ as in (poked, cracked, flapped, etc.).

4. Note: sets of paradigmatically related items are often referred to
as SYSTEMS, and so linguists talk about the ‘consonant system’
or the ‘pronoun system’.
Syntagmatic is a term that refers to the sequential characteristics
of language. When we construct words and sentences, we follow
a certain order in arranging the individual items. For instance, in
forming /kat/, we are obliged to utter the the particular
phonemes in that order; any other order would make the
sequence unacceptable or entirely different in meaning.
Note: each phoneme in the above example is referred to as
syntagm

5. • Like paradigmatic relations, syntagmatic relations can operate
at all linguistic levels. In the phrase the boy, which consists of
a determiner plus noun, we can put a variety of items
between the and boy, but we are not permitted to reverse
them.
• Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations together constitute
the identity of an item within the linguistic systems as a
whole. In other words, every linguistic item
(phoneme, morpheme, word, etc.) can be characterized or
identified by:
1. Where it is able to occur sequentially with other units (its
distribution), and 2. referring to the set of terms with which it
can be interchanged (substituted).

6. • Question:
Which relation is stronger?
The syntagmatic relation is stronger and can easily dominate the
paradigmatic relation. consider:
- The butter became rancid
Here the paradigmatic relation is so weak that it can allow only
two or three substitutions. May be “the oil became rancid, or the
cheese”. But in the example: The big car
The adjective ‘big’ can be substituted by hundreds of other
adjectives.
Consider this example:

7. • The dog barked (what else can bark?
• Here, it is obvious that the syntagmatic relation runs or directs
the paradigmatic relations since the scope of the latter is too
narrow.

8. Semantic fields:
• Semantic field is defined as an area of meaning containing
words with related sense. It is derived largely from the works
of the German and Swiss scholars of the 1920s and 1930s.
• According to semantic field theory, meanings of words cluster
together into even larger fields until the entire larger is
constituted.
• For example, the following terms which come in the sense of
‘income’ or ‘earnings’ form one semantic field:
pay, wage, salary, fee, stipend, pension, retainer, etc.

9. • All these terms form a semantic field since they are
paradigmatically related to each other:
-John received his …………………..
salary
wage
stipend
pension, etc.
Thus, there are two major criteria for a set of words to form a
semantic field:
1. The words must be paradigmatically related.
2. They must be close in meaning (they must hold lexical or sense
relations).

10. • Normally, a general term covers all the terms in a semantic
field which hold various relations among themselves although
they are all hyponymically related to the general term.
However, the member words in the semantic field hold the
relation of incompatibility with each other.
• Citrus fruits: orange, lemon, tangerine, grapefruit, kiwi, lime.
- here, the relationship among the words is ‘incompatibility’.
• It is a condition that all the members in a semantic field
belong to the same word class or syntactic category. For
example, (orange, lemon, tangerine) is an acceptable
semantic field since all the members are nouns, and the
general term (citrus fruit) is a noun.

11. • But consider the following words: [ hot, warm, cool, cold]adjs
- What is the general term that covers all these words? Is it
weather? Or temperature? [both nouns]
- Here the semantic field is incomplete since the general term
belongs to a word class which is different from the word class
to which the members of the semantic field belong.
Notes:
1. All the members of a semantic field must belong to one
variety or dialect or sub-dialect of a language since a semantic
field derives from the cognitive lexicon in the mind, or the way
speakers od a speech community divide up their world and
physical environment.

12. • For instance, if we take the semantic field of vegetables
[cabbage, cucumber, carrot, eggplant], these words form a
semantic field (of vegetables) in Standard American English.
Now, if we add the word ‘aubergine’ from Standard British
English, there will be no room for the word since the above
members have divided up the field among themselves, each
covering an amount of semantic space.
• Consider also: infant, baby, child, teenager, adult. Now try to
add the word ‘adolescent’. Where would you put it?
‘adolescent’ belongs to a more formal register.
SEE NOTEBOOK FOR FIGURES and SHAPES

13. • Polysemous words are distributed among different semantic fields
according to their different senses. consider:
Head 1: head 2:
Chest chairman/chairwoman/chairperson
Abdomen/belly boss
Leg manager
Hands etc.
• Members of a semantic field are analyzed and isolated using a procedure
called semantic feature analysis. Hence, to distinguish an orange from a
tangerine, they must be different in at least one feature, yet the general
term must have a feature in common with all the member terms.

14. The semantic field of color:
• Two reasons are behind the semantic field of color being studied more
than other fields:
1. the colors can be isolated and delimited more easily.
2. the colors are universal concepts found in all languages of the world.
• Colors were first studied by linguists and anthropologists to add support to
the concept of linguistic relativism in language; the concept which
maintains that language divides up the environment in the way it
sees, and the way in which we conceptualize the world depends on the
particular language we speak.
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: linguistic relativism
• The classic case was the issue of color perception. Languages do differ in
their color terms:
- In Navajo: green+blue= one word (there is one word for both)

15. • In Russian, however, there are two distinct words for two kinds of blue:
- Sky blue one word
- Dark blue one word
• A distinction is made between two interpretations of semantic universals:
1. Strong universals: all languages have a category X
2. Weak universals: there exists a universal set of semantic features of
which every language possesses one set).
Every language makes up words according to its own needs and the way it
sees the world. One example was the difference between English and Irish.
English distinguishes between blue and green while Irish does not. (uses the
word glass for both)

16. • After Berlin and Kay’s study, the above hypothesis was reversed and a
universal view was adopted. In their comparison of the colors in almost
one hundred languages, Berlin and Kay concluded that there exist a
number of basic colors from which every language selects a subset and
gives them names.
• Not only do they say that there are eleven basic categories
(white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange and
grey), but that these categories are ordered in a strict way and that colors
are first formed from black and white:
Purple
White Green Pink
red blue brown
black yellow Orange
grey

17. • This figure shows that if a given language has a term for blue, then it must
necessarily have a term for green and yellow, too. Likewise, when it has a
term for brown, it must have distinct terms for the preceding six colors.
This is known as “universal implications”.
• See the table below:

18. Two terms White, black Jale (New Guinea)
Three = White, black, red Tiv (Nigeria)
four White, black, red, green Hanuanoo (Philippines)
four White, black, red, yellow Ibo (Nigeria)
five White, black, red, yellow, green Tzeltal (Mexico)
six White, black, red, yellow, green, blue Tamil (India)
seven White, black, red, yellow, green, blue, Nez Perce
brown
Eight, nine, White, black, red, yellow, green, blue, English
ten or brown, purple and/or pink or orange or
eleven grey

19. Note:
• Berlin and Kay’s hypothesis is based on two assumptions:
1. Basic and peripheral colors are distinguished from each other by the
following:
a. basic colors do not mix with each other
b. basic colors are widespread and of common use
c. basic colors are made up of monomorphemic words
2. Color terms or concepts should be identified by the foci rather than the
boundaries of their range of reference. Accordingly, in a three-color
system, the terms ‘white’, ‘black’, and ‘red’ will spread over a wider range of
hues and intensities of color than they will within an eleven-term system. This
is because their foci are easy to recognize. Thus, it is easier to distinguish
between white and red than between purple and blue. The less the number
of colors, the clearer the range of reference, and thus confusion is more likely.

20. The semantic field of Kinship terms:
1. Kinship terms form a semantic field which exists in all societies.
2. Kinship terms are seen as fields where issues of semantic theory are
tested.
3. The interpretation of such terms specify the dimensions that play a role
in kinship terms by bringing out their differences in different languages.
4. Some languages classify kinship terms according to ‘sex’, whilst others
according to generations or ranks.
5. In English and Kurdish, a number of simple words are used as kinship
terms such as: father, mother, brother, dayk, bawk, bra, etc. These words
might be combined with other words(such as
grand, step, gawra, peer, zrr) to expand their scope and fill the gaps in
first and second generations.

21. Question: In what way are Kurdish and English different?
Kurdish has a number of simple terms for relations which are formed out
of marriage, like what? ( ). What about
English?
• For senior and junior or other generations, Kurdish employs terms such as
( ) while English uses
grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, grandson, granddaughter.
• For relations arising from marriage, Kurdish uses (apart from simple
words) compound words, too. Examples are: . In
English, sister-in-law, brother-in-law are used respectively, but for
(awalzawa), we have no equivalent.
• When a second marriage takes place, other terms come into
existencesuch as ‘step-father’, step-mother, step-brother, etc.

22. • Most kinship terms mark generations; so the category ‘generation’
becomes a dimension in the analysis of kinship terms.
Senior Generation 2 Generation 3 Generation 4
generation
Grandfather, Father, step- Ego, brother, Grandson,
grandmother father, father- sister, cousin granddaughter
in-law, uncle,
mother-in-law,
wife, husband

23. • Most kinship terms display ‘gender’ as follows:
- father, husband, uncle, grandfather, grandson, nephew: for male
- Mother, wife, aunt, mother-in-law, granddaughter: for female
• Some other terms do not show gender, such as: ‘cousin’ in English and
‘amoza’, ‘xaloza’ in Kurdish.
• According to Palmer, kinship terms are analyzed in terms of three features:
gender, generation, rank.
Aunt: - male cousin ±male
+ G2 G3
Collateral Collateral