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{{Short description|Grammatical unit}}
{{For|the Tagmemics punk band|The Art Attacks}}
{{Redirect|Noeme|the agent of the global brain|Technoself#Noeme}}
{{Redirect-distinguish|Pheneme|Phememe}}
{{Grammatical categories}}

A '''tagmeme''' is the smallest functional element in the [[grammar|grammatical]] structure of a language. The term was introduced in the 1930s by the linguist [[Leonard Bloomfield]], who defined it as the smallest [[meaning (linguistic)|meaningful]] unit of grammatical form (analogous to the [[morpheme]], defined as the smallest meaningful unit of [[lexis (linguistics)|lexical]] form). The term was later adopted, and its meaning broadened, by [[Kenneth Pike]] and others beginning in the 1950s, as the basis for their '''tagmemics'''.

==Bloomfield's scheme==
According to the scheme set out by [[Leonard Bloomfield]] in his book ''Language'' (1933), the tagmeme is the smallest meaningful unit of grammatical form.<ref>Bloomfield, Leonard (1933), ''Language'', New York: Henry Holt, pp. 166–169.</ref> A tagmeme consists of one or more '''taxemes''', where a taxeme is a primitive grammatical feature, in the same way that a [[phoneme]] is a primitive phonological feature. Taxemes and phonemes do not as a rule have meaning on their own, but combine into tagmemes and [[morpheme]]s respectively, which carry meaning.

For example, an utterance such as "John runs" is a concrete example of a tagmeme (an '''allotagm''') whose meaning is that an actor performs an action. The taxemes making up this tagmeme include the selection of a [[nominative]] expression, the selection of a [[finite verb]] expression, and the ordering of the two such that the nominative expression precedes the finite verb expression.

Bloomfield makes the taxeme and tagmeme part of a system of [[emic unit]]s:<ref>Bloomfield, op.cit., p. 264.</ref>
*The smallest (and meaningless, when taken by itself) unit of linguistic signaling is the '''pheneme'''; this may be either lexical ([[phoneme]]) or grammatical (taxeme).
*The smallest meaningful unit of linguistic signaling is the [[glosseme]], either lexical ([[morpheme]]) or grammatical (tagmeme).
*The meaning of a glosseme is a '''noeme''', the meaning of either a morpheme ([[sememe]]) or a tagmeme ('''episememe''').

More generally, he defines any meaningful unit of linguistic signaling (not necessarily smallest) as a ''linguistic form'', and its meaning as a ''linguistic meaning''; it may be either a ''lexical form'' (with a ''lexical meaning'') or a ''grammatical form'' (with a ''grammatical meaning'').

==Pike and tagmemics==
Bloomfield's term was adopted by [[Kenneth Pike]] and others to denote what they had previously been calling the ''[[grammeme]]'' (earlier ''grameme'').<ref>Pike, K.L. (1958), "On tagmemes, née gramemes", ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 24(4):273ff.</ref> In Pike's approach, consequently called ''tagmemics'', the hierarchical organization of levels (e.g. in syntax: word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, discourse) results from the fact that the elements of a tagmeme on a higher level (e.g. 'sentence') are analyzed as syntagmemes on the next lower level (e.g. 'phrase').

The tagmeme is the correlation of a [[Syntagmatic analysis|syntagmatic]] function (e.g. subject, object) and [[Paradigmatic analysis|paradigmatic]] fillers (e.g. nouns, pronouns or proper nouns as possible fillers of the subject position). Tagmemes combine to form a '''syntagmeme''', a syntactic construction consisting of a sequence of tagmemes.

Tagmemics as a linguistic methodology was developed by Pike in his book ''Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior'', 3 vol. (1954–1960). It was primarily designed to assist linguists to efficiently extract coherent descriptions out of corpora of fieldwork data. Tagmemics is particularly associated with the early work of the [[SIL International|Summer Institute of Linguistics]], an association of missionary linguists devoted largely to [[Bible]] translations, of which Pike was an early member.

Tagmemics makes the kind of distinction made between [[Phone (phonetics)|phone]] and [[phoneme]] in [[phonology]] and [[phonetics]] at higher levels of linguistic analysis ([[Grammar|grammatical]] and [[Semantics|semantic]]); for instance, contextually conditioned synonyms are considered different instances of a single tagmeme, as sounds which are (in a given language) contextually conditioned are [[allophone]]s of a single phoneme. The [[emic and etic]] distinction also applies in other [[social sciences]].

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Bibliography==
{{Refbegin}}
* {{Citation |last=Cook |first=Walter Anthony |title=Introduction to tagmemic analysis |year=1969 |series=Transatlantic series in linguistics |place=New York |publisher=Holt, Rinehart and Winston |isbn=978-0-03-077115-6}}
* {{Citation |last=Longacre |first=Robert E. |title=Some Fundamental Insights of Tagmemics |work=Language |volume=41 |issue=1 |pages=65–76 |year=1965 |issn=0097-8507 |jstor=411852}}
* {{Citation |last=Pike |first=Kenneth L. |title=Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior |year=2015 |orig-date=1967 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I4sbDgAAQBAJ |publisher=Walter de Gruyter |language=en |isbn=978-3-11-165715-8}}
* {{Citation |last=Pike |first=Kenneth L. |title=Linguistic concepts: an introduction to tagmemics |year=1982 |author-mask=3 |place=Lincoln |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |isbn=978-0-8032-3664-6}}
* {{Citation |last=Trask |first=Robert L. |title=A dictionary of grammatical terms in linguistics |date=2003 |orig-date=1993 |place=London |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-07809-2}}
* {{Citation |last=Waterhouse |first=Viola G. |title=The History and Development of Tagmemics |volume=16 |year=1974 |series=Janua Linguarum. Series Critica |publisher=Mouton |isbn=978-3-110-99501-5}}
{{Refend}}

==External links==
{{wiktionarypar|tagmemics}}
*[http://personal.bgsu.edu/~edwards/tags.html The Tagmemics Page] (Dr. Bruce L. Edwards)
*[http://itotd.com/articles/428/tagmemics/ Tagmemics: The linguistic theory of everything] (Joe Kissell)
*[http://www.ethnologue.com/show_subject.asp?code=TAG SIL Bibliography on Tagmemics]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20160322170318/http://learningbox.com/tagmemics/   Overview of Tagmemics as Children's Book]
* [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.359.4023&rep=rep1&type=pdf#page=155 Lareau, François. "2 The notions of grammeme and grammatical unit." Igor Boguslavsky and Leo Wanner (eds.): 146.]


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[[Category:Linguistic units]]
[[Category:Phonology]]

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