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should be observed, as it may help understanding of the strength and
extent of words released into multivalency when cut from the syntagma.
Formation of the paradigm dividing the syntagma also has a historical
analog in the introduction of word divisions into a previously undivided
line of writing. A further common metaphor for the relation of the syn-
tagma and paradigm involves weaving—the oral or written text as the
woven product that is formed from the line of oral speech extended over
time and of writing across space. In particular, written words removed
from their syntagma can be regarded as torn from their line of writing
and embedded in the fabric of the text.
From a rigorous materialist perspective, the paradigm can be regarded
as generated from the syntagma, corresponding to the probable historical
order of perception and the known historical order of the development
of written language. In the pedagogic technique for exemplifying the dis-
tinction of syntagma from paradigm—cutting lines of writing from paper
and isolating words from the line—the syntagma (the line of writing) can
be cut repeatedly along its vertical axis, isolating words or elements of
the paradigm. The possibility of cutting depends partly on word bounda-
Box 6.1
Tearing of a Word from Its Syntagm
[T]he mandrake . . . gives a cry when it torn up; this cry can drive those who hear
it mad. We read in Shakespeare (
Romeo and Juliet
, IV, iii):
And shrieks like mandrake torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad …
In German, “mandrake” is
Alraune
; earlier it was
Alruna
, a word that comes origi-
nally from “rune,” which stood for “whisper” or “buzz.” Hence (according to Skeat),
it meant a “mystery . . . a writing, because written characters were regarded as a mys-
tery known to the few.” More simply, perhaps, the idea of a visible mark standing for
a sound baffled the Nordic mind, and therein laid the mystery.
The physician Dioscorides (2nd century A. D.) identified the mandrake with the
circea
, or herb of Circe, of which we read in the tenth topic of the
Odyssey
:
At the root it was black, but its flower was like milk. Moly the gods call it, and it
hard for mortal man to dig: but the gods are all-powerful. (Borges, 1974, 96-98).
The tearing of a word from its line of writing could be compared to tearing
up a mandrake from the earth. Borges also revealed some direct association
between the mandrake and the written word.
