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Hypertext syntagmas: cinematic narration with links
syntagmatic chains

Semiotics has traditionally distinguished between two axes of organisation to determine (and provide for the possibility of) meaning. One axis is known as the associative, or paradigmatic, the other is the syntagmatic.

The paradigmatic is generally represented as a vertical axis is thought of as what could be substituted in the place of the current term, in its current location. In other words, what does the particular term used connote? The paradigmatic refers to the rules and principles of possible combination around substitute terms.

The syntagmatic is generally understood to be a horizontal axis, and this refers to the rules of combination and organisation that provide the sequential order of a sentence or utterance.

The paradigmatic and syntagmatic work in combination, so that a sentence has a particular syntagmatic form which determines what can go where, while the paradigmatic provides or produces the possibilities for various particular meanings and substitutions in each position of the syntagmatic chain. For example, English has a reasonably strict formal grammar, and this provides, in written and spoken English (though each has a slightly different grammar) a formal syntagmatic structure. However, what can be placed within each part of this formal syntagmatic chain can be chosen from a large (though finite) set of terms, and it is this combination that allows us to generate an infinite number of singular statements and utterances.

In addition, the paradigmatic demonstrates that what a word or phrase means is determined as much by what is not written or said, as it is by what appears. For example, in the sentence "my love is a rose" the last term "rose" gains its meaning by virtue of all those things that could have been said there and are not. Paradigmatically, this is obviously a very large set ("person, man, woman, dog, computer, . . ." basically any common noun would do), but of that actually selected ("rose") this is understood to gain resonance from all those terms that are suggested by and around the term used and of that set of ideas the particular term gains its meaning (and authority) by virtue of this set. In other words "rose" gains its meaning because it is not "person, man, woman, dog, computer, . . ." but also because "rose" suggests red, thorns, poetry, nature.

Metz, in his influential semiotic analysis of the cinema, has argued that the syntagmatic combination of elements is the primary trope in cinema, largely because the paradigmatic is superfluous in relation to film's 'grammar'. This can be usefully applied to a consideration of hypertext links.

Adrian Miles: Hypertext syntagmas: cinematic narration with links
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