Human Information Retrieval by Julian Warner

Author:Julian Warner
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: MIT Press

Table 6.1

Intersection of interests in Saussure and Chomsky

Citation made in 2004 in the Social Science Citation Index and in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index

Saussure (all works) 64

Chomsky (linguistics not politics) 500

Saussure and Chomsky 6

Syntagma and Paradigm

For Saussure, the interaction between syntagma and paradigm—associative relations—was crucial to understanding language. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations constituted linguistic structure and determined how the language functioned (Saussure 1916/1983, 126). In contrast to the “interpenetration of morphology, syntax and lexicology”:

Only the distinction earlier drawn between syntagmatic relations and associative relations suggests a classification which is indispensable, and which fulfils the requirements for any grammatical systematisation. (Saussure 1916/1983, 135)/

In a development from the indispensability of the distinction, Saussure insisted:

Everything in a given linguistic state should be explicable by reference to a theory of syntagmas and a theory of associations. (Saussure 1916/1983, 135).

From the perspective of modernity influenced by computational technologies, transformations on language involved in retrieval should be equally explicable by the reference to the syntagma and paradigm. We have already indicated the possibility of significant explication, understanding that creation of a full-text index involves tearing a word from its syntagma and releasing it into the paradigm. We also understand retrieval as reentering a variety of syntagmas.

In his Course in General Linguistics, Saussure is more concerned with paradigm and language than syntagma and utterance (1916/1983; Harris 1987, 125). Prioritizing language and paradigm implies objectification of human activity. In earlier neglected and difficult work on anagrams, the syntagma and its patterns of variation—conceived at various levels of granularity—received preferential attention (Starobinski 1979). In this context, the usual order of mention and consideration—paradigm before syntagma—is reversed, thus preserving the probable order in human history of activity and perception. The individual utterance is given priority over language as a whole (Vološinov 1929/1986), and the syntagma is regarded as an abstraction from its prior practical instantiation in oral speech occurring over time and written language extending across space. We can regard the paradigm, particularly as a network of associations, as a further abstraction, produced by the variety of syntagmatic occurrences of words. Finally, we will investigate the analytic value of the interaction between syntagma and paradigm in understanding signification in written language. The discussion here accepts a degree of objectification of language but acknowledges and refers to the congealing of language in its written form. We further assume the removal of communication from direct semantic ratification—separation of the utterance from its place and situation of production and also from the possibility of questioning its producer.

Syntagma

Saussure considered linearity an inescapable and fundamental aspect of language, crucial to the conception of the syntagma. Linearity followed from the spoken nature of language, and the “spoken word alone constitute[d]” the object of study of linguistics (1916/1983, 24–25).

The linguistic signal, being auditory in nature, has a temporal aspect, and hence certain temporal characteristics: (a) it occupies a certain temporal space, and (b) this space is measured in just one dimension: it is a line. (1916/1983, 69–70)

The principle of linearity is comparably significant as the “first law” of linguistics, the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign (Saussure 1916/1983, 68–70).

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