Language vs Speech (verbal behaviour)
Saussure made what became a famous distinction between langue (language) and parole (speech, or verbal behaviour). Language, for Saussure, is the symbolic system through which we . Speech refers to actual utterances. Since we can communicate an infinite number of utterances, it is the system behind them that is important, this is the primary object of study for the linguist. According to F. de Saussure, there is versus . Bylangue, best translated in its technical Saussurean sense as language system, is meant the totality of regularities and patterns of formation that underlie the utterances of a language; by parole, which can be translated as language behaviour, is meant the actual utterances themselves (URL: ht-tps://www.britannica.com/science/linguistics/The-20th-century).
The impact of Saussure's ideas on the development of linguistic theory in the first half of the twentieth century cannot be understated. Two currents of thought emerged independently of each other, one in Europe, and the other in . The results of each incorporated the basic notions of Saussurian thought in forming the central tenets of .
The most important of the various schools of structural linguistics to be found in Europe in the first half of the 20th century included the Prague school, most notably represented by Nikolay Sergeyevich Trubetskoy and Roman Jakobson, both Russian émigrés, and the Copenhagen (or glossematic) school, centred around Louis Hjelmslev (URL: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Ferdinand_de_Saussure).
Syntagmatic vs paradigmatic relations
Lingual units stand to one another in two fundamental types of relations: syntagmatic and paradigmatic. Syntagmatic relations are immediate linear relations between units in a segmental sequence (string). One of the basic notions in the syntagmatic analysis is the notion of syntactic syntagma. A "syntactic syntagma" is the combination of two words or word-groups one of which is modified by the other. To syntagmatic relations are opposed paradigmatic relations. They exist between elements of the system outside the strings in which they cooccur. The function of a grammatical paradigm is to express a categorial meaning (Blokh, 2000).