syntagma

plural syntagmata · plural syntagmas

1. human sciencesA constituent segment within a text, such as a word or a phrase that forms a syntactic unit.

   The syntagma “the God of peace” (in Greek ὁ Θεὸς τῆς εἰρήνης) occurs in all undisputed Pauline letters.

2. human sciencesAn arrangement of units that together bears a meaning.

   To combine a sequence of shots into a larger syntagma, there has to be a connection between the successive shots.

   4 more examples

   The Gospel is not a system of Theology, nor a Syntagma of theoretical propositions and conclusions for the enlargement of speculative knowledge, ethical or metaphysical.

   1825, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Aphorisms on that which is indeed spiritual religion”, in Aids to Reflection, page 198

   A syntagma is, consequently, a unit of actual relationship, while a paradigm is a unit of potential relationship.

   1974, “A note on teminology”, in Michael Taylor, transl., Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema, New York: Oxford University Press, translation of original by Christian Metz, page x

   Note that [Christian] Metz is interested in narrative elements—syntagmas—that can exist within shots as well as between them, an important refinement since, as we have already indicated, the effects of many types of montage can be accomplished within a shot without actually cutting.

   2000, James Monaco, “The language of film: signs and syntax”, in How to Read a Film: The World of Movies, Media, and Multimedia : Language, History, Theory, Oxford University Press, USA, →ISBN, page 220

   So he gives us a sort of potential sequence—an undetermined sequence—that represents a new type of syntagma, a novel form of the “logic of montage,” but that remains entirely a figure of narrativity.

   2000, Warren Buckland, The Cognitive Semiotics of Film, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 125

3. Ancient GreeceA Macedonian phalanx fighting formation consisting of 256 men with long spears (sarissae).

   The men forming the syntagma were arranged in a square of sixteen files of sixteen.

4. datedbiologyAn organized structural, functional unit of anatomical or chemical subunits.

   Synonyms: tagma

5. mediaA treatise or compendium.

   Though he informs us in the preface that his object was to trace the outlines of the great "latifundium regni philosophici" in a single syntagma, yet he really does no more than arrange a number of separate treatises or manuals, and even dictionaries, within the limits of a couple of folios.

   1905 [1878], John Morley, Diderot and the Encyclopædists, volume 1