Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of or relating to the relationship between linguistic units in a construction or sequence, as between the (n) and adjacent sounds in not, ant, and ton. The identity of a linguistic unit within a language is described by a combination of its syntagmatic and its paradigmatic relations.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to a syntagma

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective related as members of a syntagma

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French syntagmatique, from Greek suntagmatikos, arranged, put in order, from suntagma, suntagmat-, arrangement, syntactic unit; see syntagma.]

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word syntagmatic.

Examples

  • He'd already booted up and was stealing a quick glance at Maestra's e-mail, as if overnight it might have undergone a syntagmatic rearrangement, or he, after a night's rest, might find in it a nugget of information that had escaped his earlier scrutiny.

    Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates Robbins, Tom 2000

  • Exteriorizing thought, the sonnet de-psychologizes it, materializes it, alienates it from the thinker as subject by placing any given sonnet about the beloved other in a syntagmatic relation to all other thoughts about other beloved others.

    Thinking about the Other in Romantic Love 1998

  • He'd already booted up and was stealing a quick glance at Maestra's e-mail, as if overnight it might have undergone a syntagmatic rearrangement, or he, after a night's rest, might find in it a nugget of information that had escaped his earlier scrutiny.

    Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates Robbins, Tom 2000

  • The latter has ordinarily been supplied by the flow of events as narrated, a procedure which has lately been labelled “syntagmatic.”

    MOTIF HARRY LEVIN 1968

  • Instead of inferring the structure of mind in general from the structure of its large-scale causal consequences (language, cultural artifacts, and so on), what it suggests is that we might infer the structure of particular minds, i.e., personalities, from their immediate causal consequences, the syntagmatic spoken chain that makes up the speech of each indi - vidual person.

    STRUCTURALISM PETER CAWS 1968

  • Now is the time to regenerate one's sources and to look again at the aesthetic structure of art-not in terms of Koonsian economics-but closer to the point of transmission where art enters into our history as a syntagmatic signifier offering, instead of investment anxiety, a kind of solace where the syntactical transformation of material, wrought by hand, eye, and mind, again becomes a significant force in balancing the virtual chaos of the present.

    unknown title 2009

  • Roland Barthes has described the paradigmatic and syntagmatic ele - ments in 'the garment' system.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows 2009

  • Now is the time to regenerate one's sources and to look again at the aesthetic structure of art-not in terms of Koonsian economics-but closer to the point of transmission where art enters into our history as a syntagmatic signifier offering, instead of investment anxiety, a kind of solace where the syntactical transformation of material, wrought by hand, eye, and mind, again becomes a significant force in balancing the virtual chaos of the present.

    unknown title 2009

  • Now is the time to regenerate one's sources and to look again at the aesthetic structure of art-not in terms of Koonsian economics-but closer to the point of transmission where art enters into our history as a syntagmatic signifier offering, instead of investment anxiety, a kind of solace where the syntactical transformation of material, wrought by hand, eye, and mind, again becomes a significant force in balancing the virtual chaos of the present.

    unknown title 2009

  • A tree is a more paradigmatic symbol and grass more syntagmatic anyway, but grass is more complex in the way that it is not simply linear but it will be able to construct a complex network.

    Masters of Media, New Media MA Amsterdam 2008

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.