n.pl.syn·tag·mas or syn·tag·ma·ta(-tăg′mə-tə) also syn·tagms
1. A sequence of linguistic units in a syntagmatic relationship to one another.
2. A sequence of words in a particular syntactic relationship to one another; a construction.
[New Latin, from French syntagme, from Greek suntagma, suntagmat-, arrangement, syntactic unit, from suntassein, suntag-, to put in order; see syntax.]
A tentative solution to the problem of classification might be to suggest a paradigmatic rather than a syntagmatic analysis. In his introduction to the second edition of the English translation of Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktale Alan Dundes says that there are two types of structural analysis in folklore; one type of analysis follows "the chronological order of the linear sequence of elements in the text as reported from an informant", resulting in a "linear sequential structural analysis we might term "syntagmatic" structural analysis" (xi), Propp's work is an example of this approach.
It is a notable fact that only 0.9% of Snow's data lend themselves to a syntagmatic analysis while it is not even clear that all of these 44 cases are truly syntagmatically motivated.
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