Paradigm

Paradigm is a pattern of substitional relationship of a set of linguistic units in a particular linguistic context. Based on the definition, paradigm has three main points, those are:

1. system of substitutional relationship
2. System of a s of linguistic unit (linguistic unit: morphemes/words)
3. System in particular context

(Don’t think too much about them. You don’t need to memorize those confussing words above. It’s more important for you to see paradigm in real sentence)

A. Paradigm in word

-s, -ion, -ed, -or in the word “act” are one paradigm since if those suffixes are added to the word “act”, the words will be grammatical. In this case, you can subtitute –s with -or, -ed or –ion (the meaning is different of course, but in paradigm, we are not talking about meaning. It’s about grammatical or not.). You will understand the meaning of acts, actor, action, and acted. But you can’t add suffix –ment to the word “act” (you won’t say “actment”). So suffix –ion, -s, and –ment are not paradigm. Do you get it?

Acts, action, actor, and acted are called paradigm set, which means “a set of words that have the same stem”. In this case, the stem is “act”.

B. Paradigm in sentence:

The pronouns you, we, and they can replace each other. If you replace “you” with “they” or “we”, the sentence will be grammatical, but if you replace “you” with “I” or “he”, the sentence will be ungrammatical. You can’t say “I are walking” or “He are walking”. So, in this sentence (remember, in this sentence!) “you”, “we”, and “they” are not paradigm with “I”, “he”, and “she”.

But “I”, “you”, “she”, and “he” are paradigm in this sentence:

If you have got the idea, now take a look to this sentence:

	She is teaching.

Of course you know that the word “teaching” can be replaced by “cooking”, “painting”, or “writing”. But what if you replace “teaching” with “beautiful”, or “betrayed”? Of course the sentence will be grammatical, but they don’t belong to the same class of word. So, are they paradigm? The answer is yes. Once again, it’s about grammatical or not.

Take a look to the picture below.

“sleep”, “talk”, and “watch” belong to the same class of word. “Sleeping”, “talking”, and “watching” belong to the same class of word. However, “sleep” and “sleeping” don’t belong to the same class of word although they belong to the same part of speech, i.e verb.

Class of word that has the same paradigm is called as form class. Therefore, in this sentence, “sleeping”, “talking”, and “watching” are form class. But “sleeping” and “clever” are not form class although they are paradigm in this sentence since “clever” and “sleeping” don’t belong to the same class of word.