Glossary of Linguistic Terms

Paradigmatic Lexical Relation

Definition: 

A paradigmatic lexical relation is a culturally determined pattern of association between lexical units that

  • share one or more core semantic components
  • belong to the same lexical category
  • fill the same syntactic position in a syntactic construction, and
  • have the same semantic function.
Examples: 

Here is a table showing some common paradigmatic lexical relations in English with example sets and underlying structure:

Lexical relation

Example set

Underlying structure

Synonym

A "happy" synonym set: {happy, joyful, glad}

simple set

Scalar property

A temperature set: {cold, cool, lukewarm, warm, hot}

scale

Opposite

A social relation set: {(student, teacher), (patient, doctor)}

set of pairs

Generic-specific

Animal

  • dog

    • collie
    • terrier
  • cat

    • Persian
    • Siamese

tree