In linguistics, a syntagma is an elementary constituent segment within a text.
[citation needed] Such a segment can be a phoneme, a word, a grammatical phrase, a sentence, or an event within a larger narrative structure, depending on the level of analysis.
Syntagmatic analysis involves the study of relationships (rules of combination) among syntagmas.
Another language might use determiner + noun + adjective (Spanish la casa grande) and therefore have a different syntagmatic structure.
At a higher level, narrative structures feature a realistic temporal flow guided by tension and relaxation; thus, for example, events or rhetorical figures may be treated as syntagmas of epic structures.