Editing Course in General Linguistics (section)

==Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations==

Language works through relations of difference, then, which place signs in opposition to one another. Saussure asserted that there are only two types of relations: syntagmatic and paradigmatic. The latter is associative, and clusters signs together in the mind, producing sets: ''sat'', ''mat'', ''cat'', ''bat'', for example, or ''thought'', ''think'', ''thinking'', ''thinker''. Sets always involve a similarity, but difference is a prerequisite, otherwise none of the items would be distinguishable from one another: this would result in there being a single item, which could not constitute a set on its own.

These two forms of relation open linguistics up to [[phonology]], [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]], [[syntax]] and [[semantics]]. Take morphology, for example. The signs ''cat'' and ''cats'' are associated in the mind, producing an abstract paradigm of the word forms of ''cat''. Comparing this with other paradigms of word forms, we can note that in the English language the plural often consists of little more than adding an ''s'' to the end of the word. Likewise, in syntax, through paradigmatic and syntagmatic analysis, we can discover the grammatical rules for constructing sentences: the meaning of ''je dois'' ("I should") and ''dois je?'' ("Should I?") differ completely simply because of word order, allowing us to note that to ask a question in French, you only have to invert the word order.  A third valuation of language stems from its social contract, or its accepted use in culture as a tool between two humans.

Since syntagmas can belong to speech, the linguist must identify how often they are used before he can be assured that they belong to the language.