Paradigmatic Sense Relations
Distinction between paradigmatic sense relations and syntagmatic sense relations
Sense relation
Sense relation is “a semantic relation between units of meaning” (Cruse, 2011). In other words, it enables us to know the relationship between words and expressions of a language. Sense relation also reveals the “regularizing and structuring tendencies” (Cruse, 2011) in the creation of vocabulary items of a language as they are not formed arbitrarily. Such patterns in the formation of words give rise to sense relations.
The easiest way to examine sense relation is to form a lexical pair and see whether a significant relationship between the two words arises. Three significant or major types of sense relation have been found out and they are paradigmatic, syntagmatic and derivational sense relations. In this essay the distinction between the former two would be discussed.
Paradigmatic sense relation
Paradigmatic sense relation allows a content word at a particular point within a sentence to be substituted by or contrasted with content words which belong to the same semantic category. Content words are the opposite of function words and they are responsible for carrying the content or meaning of a sentence, while function words are used to develop grammatical relationships with other words in a sentence.
A semantic category can be considered as a field in which a number of semantic options (words here) are available for occupying a particular position in a sentence. Consider the example below:
I bought a/an ________ (hamster, parrot, kitten, lizard…) for my sister.
The blank represents the head in the noun phrase and a noun is required. The options “hamster, parrot, kitten, lizard” in the example all share the same semantic category: pet. The main area of study in paradigmatic sense relations thus “involves words belonging to the same syntactic category” (Cruse, 2011) as each content word in a sentence can be filled with a number of words that are
Sense relation
Sense relation is “a semantic relation between units of meaning” (Cruse, 2011). In other words, it enables us to know the relationship between words and expressions of a language. Sense relation also reveals the “regularizing and structuring tendencies” (Cruse, 2011) in the creation of vocabulary items of a language as they are not formed arbitrarily. Such patterns in the formation of words give rise to sense relations.
The easiest way to examine sense relation is to form a lexical pair and see whether a significant relationship between the two words arises. Three significant or major types of sense relation have been found out and they are paradigmatic, syntagmatic and derivational sense relations. In this essay the distinction between the former two would be discussed.
Paradigmatic sense relation
Paradigmatic sense relation allows a content word at a particular point within a sentence to be substituted by or contrasted with content words which belong to the same semantic category. Content words are the opposite of function words and they are responsible for carrying the content or meaning of a sentence, while function words are used to develop grammatical relationships with other words in a sentence.
A semantic category can be considered as a field in which a number of semantic options (words here) are available for occupying a particular position in a sentence. Consider the example below:
I bought a/an ________ (hamster, parrot, kitten, lizard…) for my sister.
The blank represents the head in the noun phrase and a noun is required. The options “hamster, parrot, kitten, lizard” in the example all share the same semantic category: pet. The main area of study in paradigmatic sense relations thus “involves words belonging to the same syntactic category” (Cruse, 2011) as each content word in a sentence can be filled with a number of words that are
References: Cruse, A. (2011). Meaning in language: an introduction to semantics and pragmatics. New York City, NY: OUP, 129-147. Leo. (2011). Two axes of word relationships. Retrieved online: http://leoxicon.blogspot.hk/2012/06/syntagmatic-vx-paradigmatic.html