Syntagmatic Relations

9 Key excerpts on "Syntagmatic Relations"

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  Complementarity Between Lexis and Grammar in the System of Person

  A Systemic Typological Approach

  • Pin Wang(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  He conceives of his notion of langue as bearing two kinds of relations: syntagmatic and associative (paradigmatic). All linguistic units are systematically related to other units by both kinds of relations. To Saussure, the system is the set of syntagmatic and associative relations that hold between the concrete entities of a langue (Hu & Ye, 2010: 54–55). In his structural approach, linearity, or syntagmatic relation, is paramount. The notion of system was redefined by the European functionalists L. Hjelmslev and J. R. Firth. This subsection will focus on Hjelmslev, and Firth’s idea of the system will be discussed in Section 2.1.2. Hjelmslev (1953: 24) draws a binary distinction between “system” and “process” in language. A system is a correlational hierarchy with an underlying paradigmatic relation, while a process is a relational hierarchy with an underlying syntagmatic relation. This is reflected in his theory of language called glossematics. Hjelmslev also draws a parallel among the relations between the items in each of the following pairs: system/process, text/language and syntagmatic/paradigmatic. The system is seen as the constant in semiotic function; therefore, language and paradigmatic relation shall also be viewed as constants or systems. In glossematicians’ view, the scientific study and analysis of language ought to attach primary importance to the relations between linguistic elements rather than the physical properties of the elements. The purpose of linguistic analysis, according to Hjelmslev, is to interpret linguistic features in terms of functions, instead of generalizing functions from the features. The spotlight is felt to fall equally on syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations; however, there is a clear comparability between paradigmatic relation and the notion of system. Albeit a direct descendant from Hjelmslev and Firth, Halliday’s systemic model is said to have been influenced by other linguistic schools like the Prague School and by B. L

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  Semantics - Theories

  • Claudia Maienborn, Klaus Heusinger, Paul Portner(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Volitional Cause )

  One can even quite legitimately ask the opposite question. How much of the semantic connections expressed by lexical and syntactic means are in fact rhetorical relations? As it turns out many are. Typically all the connectors between sentences have a semantics that is reminiscent of a rhetorical relation. The thematic relations expressed by case and word order have to be analysed by the proto-thematic properties following the analysis of Dowty (1989) . And those are suspiciously reminiscent of rhetorical relations: Cause, Volition, Affected, Beneficiary, Result, Instrument. Complement sentences can be related to Elaborations. On this perspective, one could say that there are fundamental semantic relations for natural language which should be recognised in interpretation and that the rhetorical relations are an important subset of them and not specific for relatingsentences or even clauses.

  The possibility of asyndetic connection between sentences bearing a rhetorical relation seems a special property of rhetorical relations, but it is not. Natural languages get away with having syntactic connections that can mean many different things in particular contexts. The participial construction is a good example in English, and so are nonrestrictive nominal modifiers. The range of rhetorical relations that can be expressed is limited in these cases by the fact that the referent of the predication is fixed. In Latin, this restriction is removed in the ablativus absolutus participial construction. That can in fact mean the whole range of rhetorical relations.

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  Significance in Language

  A Theory of Semantics

  • Jim Feist(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  not in lexis are realised. That is needed because the lexical senses in themselves do not show the hearer which words are to be related, and how, even though that is a vital part of the speaker’s message. The relationships are of course indicated primarily by word and group position, in English; for example, preceding a head word typically indicates modification of the head. (See Chapter 3, §7, on grammatical meaning.) Other languages use other primary means, such as morphological case.

  In English, morphology makes a second contribution to meaning similarly, through word form. For example, having a form that can be inflected for tense typically indicates an Event and indicates to the hearer the time of occurrence and the aspect under which the event will be considered; and, as Predicator, it frequently signifies whether the hearer should accept the statement or answer the question, etc. The “grammatical categories” that constitute syntax exist to convey meaning, as Halliday notes (2004: §3.2); they are not fully autonomous. Transitivity and the “semantic roles”, “theta roles”, “grammatical relations”, or “argument structure” are not in the syntax; nor are they part of it: they are meanings created by it. That is parallel to the status of meanings in the phonological stratum; see §3.2.

  A third element of the total meaning that appears here without having appeared in the lexis is the bonding between words and groups. As explained in Chapter 5, §2.3.4, §2.3.5, and §3, the bonding is between certain sense elements in each of the related words or groups and is constructed by the hearer in response to grammatical meanings. For example, the fact that red precedes leaves in “those red leaves”, which signals modification, leads the hearer to bond red as value to the colour attribute of leaves.

  Those processes develop the ideational meaning. Only a little interpersonal meaning is added at this level, as when exclamatory structure realises emotion (Chapter 3, §2.3.4,) and tag questions realise attitude (“is it?”/“isn’t it?”, Chapter 3, §2.3.5). Content-unit structure, however, is developed fully; see Chapter 2, §2.3.

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  Difference

  • Mark Currie(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The first category is relations in praesentia, or relations between any word and the other words with which it combines in a sequence. The second category is relations in absentia, or relations between words that are present and those that are absent from a given utterance. Linguistic meaning is obviously deeply bound up with both of these categories of relations. To generate a meaningful sentence, for example, one has to be able to do two things simultaneously: to combine words with each other in a chain, and to select the right words from all the available possibilities for each position in the sentence. The factors that govern these two principles, of combination and selection, are extremely complex. The meaningful combination of words in a sequence, for example, will involve a kind of grammatical competence, or knowledge of the rules and practices that govern the order in which elements of a sequence are arranged; but other factors will be in play, such as the logical linearity of the sequence, or the need for emphasis or elegance to maximise the effect of the sequence. Similarly, the principle of selection entails an extremely complex, assimilated knowledge of the language system as a whole, an ability not only to select the right kind of word for each position, but to understand its relations of similarity and difference, synonymity and antonymity, with the other available possibilities. Of course, this all happens automatically, and need not be calculated each time from first principles, but it is partly the automatic and uncalculated ability to do something so complex that is the interest for linguists, philosophers and critics. When we tie a shoelace, we hardly notice the astounding complexity of the knot or the incredible dexterity required to tie it, and that pales in comparison to the creation of a complex sentence

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  Translation, Linguistics, Culture

  A French-English Handbook

  • Nigel Armstrong(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Multilingual Matters

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 4

  Words in Combination

  In Chapter 3 we considered words in isolation, although we saw that when we try to study words in this way, translation problems become apparent, resulting from the relationships that words contract with each other; the cases we saw in the previous chapter were reflected and collocational meaning. In this chapter we consider in more depth the way in which word-sets are structured so as to achieve meaning in combination, as usual of course from the viewpoint of the translation problems caused.

  The Structural Organisation of Meaning: Paradigms and Syntagmata

  We shall consider the organisation of the lexicon again from the viewpoint of Saussure's structural, or difference-based, view of language. From this perspective, we can look at lexical structure along two dimensions: the ‘vertical’ paradigm and the ‘horizontal’ syntagma (plural: syntagmata). We have already considered briefly the paradigm in the previous chapter. The fact that grammarians usually organise paradigms in lists seems to reflect an assumption about the mental organisation of the lexicon. By this latter term we mean something like ‘the mental dictionary’. An axiom of linguistics is that speakers possess a lexicon and a grammar; this second term means here a set of rules internalised by the speaker and allowing the combination of elements from the lexicon into acceptable sentences along the syntagmatic or syntactic level, as shown in Figure 4.1 :

  Figure 4.1 The interaction of paradigm and syntagma

  Figure 4.1 expresses the idea that items from the various paradigms (the lexicon) are slotted into syntagmata (phrases and sentences, following grammatical rules) to form meaningful sequences. The first syntagma, il est parti avec sa femme , has been filled in; it would not be difficult to fill the others similarly, as je suis sortie sans mon mari

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  Grammatical Relations

  The Evidence Against Their Necessity and Universality

  • D. N. S. Bhat(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Part I Evidence against the necessity of grammatical relations

  Passage contains an image

  2 The need for grammatical relations

  2.1 DIFFERENTIATING BETWEEN SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC RELATIONS

  Sentences can generally be analyzed as consisting of a set of arguments (noun phrases) and a predicate. There are some exceptions to this general rule in some languages, such as the equational sentences of Kannada, in which there is no predicate, or the ‘weather’ sentences of the same language in which there is no argument (see 3.2.1 ). The arguments occurring in a sentence have to represent two main types of relations called ‘semantic’ relations and ‘pragmatic’ relations, of which the former relate the arguments with the predicate and the latter with the speech context.

  Semantic relations deal with the basic ‘conceptual’ meaning of a given sentence. Their number and type is determined by the kind of predicate that occurs in the sentence, or rather by the kind of event or state that the predicate denotes. For example, the verb give would generally require three different semantic relations, namely the giver (agent), the receiver (recipient) and the object given (patient), whereas the verb cry would require only one: the person who cries (agent).

  Pragmatic relations, on the other hand, deal with an entirely different type of meaning: namely, the way in which these different arguments are related to other arguments that occur in the speech context (for example, the ones occurring in the preceding sentences) and also with the participants themselves of the speech act, such as the speaker and the addressee. This latter type of relation is regarded as dealing with the organization or ‘packaging’ of the arguments concerned (Foley and Van Valin 1984). For example, a given argument may have to refer to an individual or object that is already being talked about in the speech context or to one that is being newly introduced into the conversation; it may have to refer to an individual that needs to be specifically emphasized or to one that may be left in the background; and so on.

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  Coordinating Information and Communications Technology Across the Primary School

  A Study in the Adjectives of English

  • Connor Ferris(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1

  The intensional framework of syntax      

  1.1 The overall goal of this investigation is to argue that there is a very great deal that can be said, that has not yet been said, about the semantic value of fundamental syntactic relations. It addresses this issue by looking at a large body of empirical evidence, specifically at examples of the relations between adjectives and other words in their phrases or sentences (these other words by no means always being nouns or noun phrases). The observations which we shall make can be directly linked to an account of the overall possibilities of English grammatical structure; by this we do not mean to speak of the paradigmatic relationships between different clauses, but of the Syntagmatic Relations which construct the clause itself. We argue that adjectives appear, diversely, in their own right, as syntagmatic structures unfold, and that clauses proposed to underlie them are illusory.

  We confidently assume that the results set out here will, in their broad principles, be valid for any language; however, because of the limitless domains that would appear on the horizon if one were to include proper exemplification from other languages, and since there is ample material to consider in English alone, the latter is the basis on which the investigation will proceed.

  If the approach to be found here can be tied to a previous tradition, it will be to the modern speculative grammar of which Jespersen and Sapir were eminent exponents earlier in the century; this tradition has become unfashionable in the past two or three decades, though distinguished work in this mode has still been produced by various scholars, for instance P. H. Matthews in England and Dwight Bolinger in America; in particular, if there are any worthwhile results in the present text, they owe much to Bolinger’s example of investigation through careful scrutiny of what really happens grammatically when a given expression is used. However, even though the work described here is certainly concerned with grammar (and not, for example, based on sociological data or on lexical classification), it cannot be denied that it is remote from much of modern writing on grammar. On the other hand, there are three points which may count in its favour:

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  Essays in Syntactic Theory

  • Samuel David Epstein(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  “Government” or “Minimal Domain” definitions are “complex”. Of course, this claim has no substance whatsoever in the absence of an explicit principled complexity metric. Hence, I will leave it to the intuition of the reader that the alternative theory of syntactic relations proposed in this paper achieves significant simplification and (we hope) exhibits no associated loss, and perhaps even a gain, in empirical adequacy.

  In this paper I will address each of these four (closely related) problems confronting the fundamental construct “syntactic relation” as it is expressed in contemporary syntactic theories. The analysis will be couched within the Minimalist Program (Chomsky ( 1993; 1994)) within which, importantly: (i) D-Structure is eliminated and along with it, the bifurcation of the D-Structure-generating base component and the transformational component, and (ii) Generalized Transformation (= Merge), arguably unifiable with Singuláry Transformation (- Move-a), as proposed in Kitahara ( 1994; 1995; 1997), is reinstated.

  The central hypothesis I will propose here can be expressed in an informal (inexact) and preliminary fashion as follows:

  • (2) Preliminary Hypothesis:

  • a. The fundamental concept “Syntactic Relation,” e.g. “Government” or “Minimal Domain,” are not unexplained definitions defined on representations (i.e., “already built-up” phrase structure representations). Rather, syntactic relations are properties of independently motivated, simple and minimal transformations. That is, syntactic relations are established between a syntactic category X and a syntactic category Y when (and only when) X and Y are transformationally concatenated (thereby entering into sister-relations with each other) by either Generalized Transformation or Move-a during the tree-building, iterative, universal rule application which constitutes the derivation.
  • b. The fundamental structure-building operation is not Move-a (Chomsky ( 1981 ; 1982)) nor Affect a (Lasnik and Saito ( 1992)) but rather Concatenate, as is entirely natural and minimal in that concatenation requires at least two objects: Concatenate X and Y, thereby forming Z.

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  Beyond Superstructuralism

  • Richard Harland(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 8 , logic applies to sentences only after they have become fully formed in other respects. Logical relations do not constitute sentence-meaning, and are not integral to the sentence as grammatical relations are. A logical calculus only interprets what has already been generated by the action of syntactic instructions and grammatical relations upon meaning. So when the Logical Form and Semantic Representation components are made subsequent to all considerations of syntax and grammar, logico-semantics has finally gravitated to its proper place from a syntagmatic point of view.

  But, by the same token, logico-semantics can no longer claim to be dealing with meaning. For meaning must be involved in sentence generation from the most fundamental levels—not merely tacked on after a sentence has already been developed to its highest syntactical and grammatical form. How could sentences ever evolve on the basis of syntax and grammar alone? It is not just that the notion of syntax and grammar coming before meaning is implausible here: the notion of syntax and grammar interreacting with meaning at just a single interface would be implausible regardless of whichever component came first. The real interreaction of syntax and grammar with meaning must take place on every level of syntagmatic processing: it can never be represented in the kind of diagram which deals only in simple ‘block’ components.

  MONTAGUE GRAMMAR

  It has to be said that what Government and Binding Theory puts into the Logical Form component is only a very pale shadow of what Generative Semantics once sought to incorporate into ‘natural logic’. Logical Form deals with the old issue of the logical scope of quantifiers—but not a great deal more. In fact, Logical Form incorporates only so much of logico-semantics as can be made accountable to rules and principles already invoked for the D-structure and S-structure levels of syntax— the projection principle and Empty-Category Principle, for example.59 As for the Semantic Representation component, its potential contents are still highly uncertain (although Chomsky has gestured towards some development of the predicate calculus). Nor is there even any general agreement that a Semantic Representation component is needed in the model at all. Although grammarians of the Government and Binding school continue to believe that the business of semantics is logical business, they no longer believe that it is particularly their

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