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THE LINGUISTICS STUDENT’S HANDBOOK 44
answer for this. Blackmail has become an unmotivated word, even though we
can see the elements black and mail within it.
Despite such problems, the distinction between synchronic and diachronic
studies is generally maintained today.
Paradigmatic versus syntagmatic
When we speak, language is produced in time, so that some bits of our utterance
precede or follow other bits. When we write, this temporal aspect of language
is replaced by a spatial aspect: the words are set out on the page in a
conventional way such that linear order corresponds to the temporal order in
speech. Thus English is written from left to right, with elements further to the
left corresponding to elements produced earlier than elements further to the
right. So in (1) cat precedes mat in linear order, corresponding to temporal
structure in speech: we would say cat before we would say mat.
(1) The cat sat on the mat
The elements in (1) are said to be related to each other syntagmatically.
Together they form a syntagm (/�sint�m/) or construction. We can say that
the verb sit (or sat in this particular sentence) determines what it will be related
to syntagmatically in that it demands something in the position of the cat in (1)
and allows, but does not demand, an equivalent phrase after it (as in They sat
the dog on the mat).
However, language is also structured in terms of the words (or other elements)
which are not there but which could have been. Each of the words in
(1) could have been replaced by a number of other possible words. Some examples
are given in (2).
(2) The cat sat on the mat
This girl sits across your bed
That student walked over her car
My frog ran by their lap
The words in each of the columns in (2) are related to each other paradigmatically.
They are related by being alternative possible choices at a position in the
syntagm. While elements which are related syntagmatically are all present, elements
which are related paradigmatically are mostly absent: they are relationships
of potential.
Each of the columns in (2) can be called a paradigm (/�p�rədaim/),
although that name is more usually reserved for a particular type of paradigmatic
relationships, those holding between different forms of the same